Moms For Liberty is the group affiliated with the unprofessional review website BookLooks.org, as first reported here in May 2022. BookLooks, which got its start as BookLook.info, provides cherry-picked passages from novels the group seeks to review so that members can lodge challenges of titles rated by volunteer members as a 4 or 5 on their invented ratings system.
Over the last several years, public institutions including public libraries and public schools, have been plagued by book challenges citing the “reviews” from BookLooks. Some have gone so far as to believe they should purchase a subscription to the review system which has no rhyme or reason for how it chooses its books nor any credentialing of its volunteer reviewers. Today, there are public schools like that in Anoka County, Minnesota and public libraries, like that in Warren County, New Jersey, seeking to utilize the review site as if it is anywhere near the caliber of legitimacy as the long-running, professionally-developed review sources librarians have turned to for generations.
But now it looks like Moms For Liberty’s BookLooks is shutting down on March 23. The following appeared on the BookLooks website on Monday, March 10, 2025:
The white and green text on a black background is a design nightmare, so if it is difficult to read, the text says:
As of Sunday March 23, 2025 BookLooks.org will be ceasing operation and taking down all of our reports from the site.
It has been quite the ride with many ups and downs since God called us to this work in 2022, but after much prayer and reflection it has become apparent that His work for us here is complete and that He has other callings for us.
We give thanks to Him for the opportunity to do this work, and we are grateful for the kind words of support from all those who found this work useful. Our charge was always to help inform parents and it would appear that mission has been largely accomplished. We pray that publishers will take up the torch and be more transparent regarding explicit content in their books so that there will be no need for a BookLooks.org in the future.
Thank you and God bless!
None of the official Moms For Liberty channels have announced this, which isn’t surprising. Despite evidence of the group’s investment in BookLooks, they’ve continued to deny the relationship. BookLooks has served as a template and as a resource for groups beyond Moms For Liberty as well.
Whether or not this is a publicity stunt intending to get the site onto even more radars–there are more than a handful of institutions utilizing the site and more eager to give it legitimacy despite its significant shortcomings–is yet to be determined. But the announcement brings with it a load of questions worth asking and thinking about in the broader context of contemporary book and curriculum censorship under the new administration. Among them:
- Did the site’s work get sold to a bigger company looking to “professionalize” the volunteer-created reviews? There are several companies with a vested interest in “helping” library workers and educate navigate the growing field of book challenges who may be eager to implement such a ratings system for their companies to use. We’ve already seen one library vendor rely on the same language developed on BookLooks related to their universal ratings system (the vendor has since backed off following criticism). Their ratings system has had penetration for other unprofessional review resources–whether or not BookLooks.org itself remains active doesn’t matter.
- What role the leadership in Moms For Liberty has within the current federal administration and where/how this site’s content will be utilized in other ways? Tiffany Justice, one of the cofounders Moms For Liberty, was given prominent placement in a recent press release from the Department of Education about the department’s new DEI snitch line, suggesting she and her ilk have been given ready access to the nation’s department covering public schools.
- Whether or not they’ve been been hit with a lawsuit or other legal ramifications. Reviews on the site copied passages from the books they rated amply, with could be a violation of copyright laws. Moms For Liberty is engaged in a lawsuit in New York, and BookLooks has been cited in an Amicus Brief–the Wayne County chapter of the group, alongside a pastor, are suing the Clyde Savannah School District for not banning books they disagree with. Removing the site and reviews may be part of what the group’s lawyers are recommending they do to protect themselves from future similar cases.
- Where and how Moms For Liberty’s increasing push to get books into public schools is in direct conflict with the mission of having books challenged based on their own ratings system. Just today, the Sun Coast News covered the group’s donation of several books packed with right-wing propaganda into the Hernando County School District. The group also published their first children’s book at the end of 2024.
This is a developing story, with more information to come over the next few weeks. If you are invested in archiving this moment in censorship history–something that will be especially important as we continue through an administration where things not written down or archived simply “never happened”–now is the time to download and save the most egregious reports generated on this site.
If you’re a library worker or educator who has had books challenged or removed on the basis of BookLooks reviews, you may want to save those reviews as well.