The U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce met on March 17, 2026, for markup on House Resolution 7661.

• Also known as the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act,” HR 7661 would modify the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 by prohibiting use of funds under the act “to develop, implement, facilitate, host, or promote any program or activity for, or to provide or promote literature or other materials to, children under the age of 18 that includes sexually oriented material, and for other purposes.”
• The bill would ban any “sexually oriented materials,” including any books about “gender dysphoria” or “transgenderism” [sic] in public schools.

The committee passed the bill forward to the full House of Representatives with recommendation. Votes fell along party lines, with Democrats making clear that:

• This bill targets LGBTQ+ people.
• It is a tremendous overreach of Congressional powers in ascribing what books can and cannot be used in public schools.
• It is intended to further promote a nationwide voucher program that funnels taxpayer money into private and home schools. 

Now is the time to take concrete action to kill this bill before it has a chance to go any further. Here are several things you can do right now to speak out against this anti-LGBTQ, anti-literature bill:

📞 Contact your House representative via phone or email.

• 📝 Use a script if you don’t know what to say to your representative. 5 Calls has an easy-to-use script available here.

📆 Get in front of your representative at district forums, meetings, town halls, and office hours.

• Ask them questions about the bill and tell them your concerns.

🤝 Reach out to your House representative if they are part of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce that marked up the bill this week.

• If your representative voted against the bill, thank them.
• If your representative voted to advance the bill, let them know they have betrayed their communities. Remind them that they work on behalf of constituents, not their party. Here’s an image of the recorded vote. 

🙏 Hope is not lost, and HR 7661 has numerous hurdles before it moves further in the House and/or onto the Senate. The best thing to do right now is take action and spread the word, offering others the tools and resources to also take action. 

Learn more about the ramifications of this bill, as well as numerous additional talking points, in our post. - KJ

The tick-tock of publishing (and of TikTok, too, tbh) is all about anticipation and results.

We begin every month with a conversation about the It Books. Those are the new releases everyone is excited about and ready to speculate on, but it’s anyone’s guess what will happen when they actually hit shelves.

The Hot List is about the books that are ruling the conversation. We’re talking adaptations, bestsellers, book club hits, critics’ faves, word-of-mouth sensations, and pop culture trends. You know a Hot List book when you see it.

This month’s Hot List includes:

• Skyrocketing preorders for ACOTAR books 6 and 7
• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, as the adaptation lands this week
• A YouTube sensation’s debut novel
• The 2025 indie bookstore word-of-mouth hit that just won’t quit

🎧 Listen to our run-down of these and more of the books everyone is talking about now.

An extraordinary crime novel from a rising star, that follows the ripple effects of a tragic shooting throughout a Chicago community from the view of the teachers, police officers, and students impacted. Hard Times takes stock of what it means to be there for your people, whether you want to or not, and unflinchingly confronts the American Dream—a moving, engrossing, and necessary read.

I bet you can hear the Hollywood folks high-fiving from space.

Project Hail Mary , opening this week, is poised to be one of the biggest films of 2026, and it just might be among the best, too. Here’s a look at the early reviews:

"It’s everything fans of the book could want — and it’s a whole lot of fun for everyone else, too." (Tasha Robinson, Polygon)

"...what’s special about Project Hail Mary  is its potential to tap into memories of different space sagas and alien lifeform movies for different generations." (David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter)

"...a more accessible film than The Martian, merging its predecessor’s scientific focus with the soul of a blockbuster. The hard sci-fi elements of Project Hail Mary are core to the story, but never get so overwhelming that you forget about the human (and alien) elements that give the film its emotional weight." (Andrew Webster, The Verge)

"...A cosmic adventure that feels diagrammed, if not programmed, to be The Movie We Need Right Now." (Owen Gleiberman, Variety)

"The most exasperatingly insistent crowd-pleaser I’ve seen in a while." (Justin Chang, The New Yorker)

Noticing any patterns? There’s nary a pan to be found. If the biggest knock against this adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel is that it’s almost scientifically calibrated to make people glad they went to the movies, well, no harm, no foul.

🚀 Study up for your post-viewing book vs movie convo with our deep dive into Project Hail Mary.

The Trans Rights Readathon has begun! It runs from March 17th to March 31st, the Trans Day of Visibility.

The readathon aims to "read and uplift books written by and/or featuring trans, nonbinary, 2Spirit, and gender-nonconforming authors and characters."

• That means not just reading books by and/or about trans people, but also amplifying those books by making content about them as well as monetarily supporting the trans community.

This is a decentralized fundraiser, so the organizers encourage you to get involved locally, support mutual aid funds, start your own fundraiser, give to GoFundMe campaigns, etc.

• They also recommend Point of Pride and Transgender Law Center.

Looking for a place to get started? Here are four new books by and/or about trans people to add to your readathon TBR:

• 🏳️‍⚧️ A Lady for All Seasons by TJ Alexander: the genderfluid Regency romcom we’ve been waiting for
• 🏳️‍⚧️ Chicken Heart by Morgan Boecher: a graphic novel about a grieving comedian finding community at a trans commune
• 🏳️‍⚧️ This Wretched Beauty by Elle Grenier: a transfeminine YA retelling of Dorian Gray
• 🏳️‍⚧️ Time-Tripping Over You by Brennon Lane: a love story about queer and trans reluctant time travelers

👉 Find four more 2026 trans books recommendations in the newest Our Queerest Shelves newsletter, and sign up to get even more queer book recs.

Level up your reading life with Book Riot All Access! Unlock the industry’s best deep dives, join in with community features, explore new books with the New Release Index, and conquer the Read Harder Challenge alongside fellow bibliophiles. Get more from your reading life with All Access. Join today!

Audiobook listeners who want to support local bookstores, gather ’round! Libro.fm is an employee-owned Social Purpose Corporation that shares profits from audiobook purchases with local bookstores of your choosing, and the latest additions to their catalogue are straight fire 🔥.

👭🏾 Kin by Tayari Jones, narrated by Angel Pean and Ashley J. Hobbs — This story of two motherless Black girls raised in Louisiana, but who have vastly different lives, is on everyone’s list this year ( including Oprah’s).

𐦝 Cleopatra by Saara El-Arifi , narrated by Adjoa Andoh — Lately, many fabled and storied women of antiquity have been having their stories retold, and this time it’s the last queen of Egypt’s turn.

🪧 Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age by Ibram X. Kendi, narrated by the author— The National Book Award winner and author of How to Be an Antiracist helps us understand how the “great replacement theory” has gotten such a hold on our current politics.

🎙️ This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum, narrated by Julia Whelan and Sean Patrick Hopkins — Benny Abbott and Joy Moore are the podcast hosts of a popular show that shares stories of extreme survival, but now that Benny is the prime suspect in Jenny’s disappearance, the next survival story they’ll be focused on is their own.

🕵️‍♀️ Whidbey by T Kira Madden , narrated by Eunice Wong, Christina Moore, Mia Hutchinson-Shaw, and Rebecca Lowman — Abuse and the justice system connect three women to one man—a man who has just been murdered—in this nuanced whodunit.

Jeannine A. Cook is the founder and owner of the bookshops Harriett’s, Ida’s, and Josephine’s. Her newest book, Shut Up and Read: A Memoir From Harriett’s Bookshop is out now.

When I opened Harriett’s Bookshop, I could have never predicted that my 500-square-foot shop would survive and thrive, even being featured in Vogue, The New York Times, and Essence. Or that, in just a few years, we’d expand our network of sister bookshops from Philadelphia to Paris. Or, most importantly, that our story would touch so many everyday people. But as you might expect from someone raised by a blind librarian, I understood the power of books.

On February 1, 2020, I opened Harriett’s, to celebrate women authors, artists, and activists. Americans typically learn about Harriett Tubman in the third grade—how she ran the underground railroad and freed the enslaved. But to me, she is more than a historic figure. Ms. Harriett has been my guide. If she could be a wade-through-waist-high-water-in-the-winter type woman, so could I. So could we!

At our opening in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia, people from all walks of life showed up in droves. Six weeks later, we received an email from the mayor that read “effective immediately,” shut the doors to your cute little bookshop and don’t open them again. With the deadly Covid outbreak came a racial uprising, threats on my life, wildfires, a war, and even the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. 2020 was that type of year.

Despite all odds, Harriett’s has survived. We survived to serve customers worldwide. To build bookshops in unconventional places, from a train station to a horse barn. To distribute books to organizers at protests from Minneapolis to Louisville. To deliver books to children on horseback. We survived to write this memoir.

Still, I live in ever-present angst that our bookshops, all bookshops, will have to close someday if we don’t do something drastic. And quick. There are the book bans, the downward spiral in readership, and AI taking over every damn thing. In the face of all that, indie bookshop survival will take strategy and collective intentionality like a modern underground railroad. I believe the next leg of our journey is to remind our community to get on board despite the noise: Shut up and read.

Calling all librarians (and other book nerds)! Keeping up with the book world is a full-time job on top of your full-time job. Let Book Riot’s Check Your Shelf newsletter do the heavy lifting. Get a curated weekly digest of industry news, diverse book lists, and collection development inspiration delivered straight to your inbox—for free. Sign up for Check Your Shelf today!

Did you know? Philip Roth is buried in the Bard College cemetery. He chose the location so as to be close to his friend and fellow writer Norman Manea (who was, and is, still alive).

📚 Topple your TBR with Goodreads users’ most anticipated books of spring.

🦇 Delve into the world of recent gothic novels, from Gilded Age romance to Victorian suspense.

🎥 Watch the trailer for an upcoming documentary about beloved poet Mary Oliver.

🌎 See the city UNESCO has designated as the 2027 World Book Capital.

📙 Catch up with the best new paperbacks.