Rising book bans: Grounds for moral panic?

Whether it’s the depiction in “Maus” of the Holocaust, the discussion about puberty in “It’s Perfectly Normal,” the LGBTQ perspective presented in “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” or the presence of “The Bluest Eye” and “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” in the high school canon, books in schools and libraries nationwide increasingly have targets on their spines.

Experts say the challenges – fanned by the heated online “outrage ecosystem” – are growing exponentially. Last year, reports the American Library Association, brought the highest number of reported book challenges it has tallied in a decade.

Though the full year has...