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I went to a Christian private school for the majority of my youth. The school library was small but had a lot of everything but was more geared to engage the younger kids and get them to build a reading habit. For the older kids it was pretty much whatever you wanted to read you could bring. My school cared more that you were reading something and actually interested in it rather than what the book was. For example many a kid in the 8th grade were openly reading LGBTQ books. It was just when that wave was happening but no teacher ever told them to hand it over or put it away. One teacher even used to read her bodice ripper romance novels and leave them out on her desk.
I was a precocious voracious reader as a kid so anything I could get my hands on I read. Hell I even taught myself to read in Spanish when I was 12 from old Tijuana Bibles (not an actual bible its a smutty but not always comic book with soap opera type stories) I'd find at my grandmas house.
The only time I had a limit to what I could read was when I had a child's library card and could only use it in the kids floor. I remember being upset I couldn't check out a book about the Waffen SS (learned about them from old History Channel documentaries I'd wake up early to watch) I had found in the regular floor of the library. I was maybe 8 or 9 when that happened. I also was never limited in what I could watch on TV or what video games I could play.
I'll never support book bans and I sure as hell will never support book burnings which I unfortunately can see some zealot trying to say is the only was to keep certain books from "poisoning" the youth. A local bookstore around me has a few tables of "banned books". I always see those tables with more people around them reading the backs or inside jackets than I see doing the same in the stacks and around the bestsellers tables. Not all banned books are what I'd want to read but someone else probably does and I won't stop them but I will support them. I've bought a few for clearly interested parties that put them back due to price. I'll also buy someone an extra book of two if I see them trying to choose which to buy and which to put back. If it's a kid I'll ask the parent if the parent says no I tell the kid sorry and thats that. Only one time has someone actually gotten mad at me but another customer just told the kid to get the book off that internet library we don't talk about here. The vast majority of people allow it and are thankful. I get it money is tight and books are pricey but books are important too damn it.
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