For Grade 10 student Reina Takata, the school library was somewhere to spend her lunch hour. But when she returned to her Mississauga high school after the summer of 2023, familiar books had disappeared.
Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry were among the titles she could no longer find, according to an account cited in a new report on Canadian school libraries.
The report describes roughly half the books disappearing from Erindale Secondary School’s library during a controversial book removal process at the Peel District School Board.
Education researcher Paul W. Bennett argues that shrinking collections and having fewer teacher-librarians are leaving children with less access to books and guidance when choosing them.
