• About Screen It First LLC

    Our goal is to inform parents and educators about sensitive content in children’s books.

    We do not encourage book banning nor censoring, but instead aim to help the adults in a child’s life make informed decisions about which content is appropriate for their child. This is why we have chosen not to include subjective analysis on books–our community simply identifies potentially offensive content and leaves it to you to decide whether or not it’s acceptable.

    It would be impossible (and unwise) to avoid all sensitive topics, instead, we provide a simple tool for parents to offer age-appropriate material that is best suited to their child’s mental, emotional, and spiritual development.  

    Help Screen Books

  • Why We Exist?

    Each child may be ready for certain topics at a different pace than other children (that may not coincide with a standardized age range). The adults in a child’s life know better what that child is ready for and the circumstances surrounding the child. We want to empower you to be able to introduce topics when your child is ready for them.

  • What We Screen For

    Foul Language

    Use of foul language: cussing, cursing, swearing, etc.

    Violence / Death

    Violence - to include murder, fights, or other physical violence.

    Sexual Content

    Sexual innuendo, sexualizing children, highlighting private body parts, sexual thoughts, kissing, sexual acts, grooming, sexual humor, sexual education - this includes outright and subtle references.

    LGBTQIA+

    Images or written content referring to LGBTQIA+ relationships or issues.

    Alcohol/Drugs

    Has content, written or visual, of drugs, alcohol, or smoking.

    Racism

    Racism and racist language in all its forms.

    Lying / Stealing

    Characters lying, cheating, or stealing.

    Dark Content

    Containing demons, witches, or other scary material.

    Potty Humor

    Fart, poop, pee, or other “potty” jokes.

    Nothing Found

    Our community has had at least 5 independent users screen this book and found nothing worthy of being flagged.

    Other (misc.)

    This is a generic category that allows users to flag any other content that doesn't fall into other categories.

    Explicit Content

    Due to the graphic nature of the submissions in this category, no images will be displayed.

  • Help Screen Books

    Who can be a screener?

    Screen It First LLC is an open community, so anyone willing to post a screen can do so. There is no login required and we DO NOT store any personal information for any users.

    Requirements

    1. Be mindful and honest.
    2. Have Internet access.
    3. Ability to take and upload a picture of the book's content.
    4. Confirm if the content you're screening has already been posted by another user.

    Note: This site exists as a resource for parents & educators to quickly identify age-appropriate content for young readers.

    Help Screen Books

    Privacy

    All submissions are completely anonymous. When you submit a ‘screen’ we anonymize and never track your personal information, there are no accounts, we’re not logging your IP address… your submission is 100% anonymous.

    How to Screen Books

    1. Take a picture of the content you feel others should be aware of from the book.
    2. Use our basic editing tool to highlight or rotate the image.
    3. Type the page number of the content in the page number box.
    4. Optional: Write a brief description of what you found.
    5. Select one Screen It First LLC category that applies to this image.
    6. Add more images from this book or select DONE to send your submission to our moderators.

    Thanks for doing your part to help parents and educators do better for the next generation.

    What should you screen for?

    For now we are keeping the scope of our book screenings to include only the categories listed above. Everyone has different convictions and standards, so if you find content that is offensive in a book go ahead and post it; 95% of all screens posted get approved through our moderation process. (See below) Screens can only belong to one category, however, if you feel the content in the book warrants being in more than one category, you are welcome to post the same image to a different category after completing the first.

    If you see something in a book that doesn't quite fit neatly into one of the listed categories, please use the "Other (misc.) category when submitting.

    Our approval process

    This is an open community and we allow any user to submit a screen. We manually run each screen through the following approval process:

    All submissions are verified for accuracy and appropriateness. Clear photos, accurate descriptions, and page numbers help speed up the approval process.

    We are an all-volunteer organization. If you are interested in being part of the review team or have other suggestions on how we can serve you and your children better, please contact us – we look forward to hearing from you.

    1. Confirmation: We manually confirm the image you submit is, in fact, contained in the book. We appreciate any additional information/context you can add when posting the screen to expedite the approval process.
    2. Review: Once confirmed, we review the screen for context and accuracy. Is it properly categorized? Is the highlighted portion of the image accurate?
      It's worth noting here that we are very liberal in our review process. Meaning that so long as the posted screen can reasonably be considered questionable content within the selected category, we will mark it as approved.
    3. Modify: If an image isn't clear or the highlighted section needs to be modified we make the modifications manually prior to final approval.
    4. Approval: With all modifications in place, confirmed, and approved, we mark the screen as approved and it appears for all users on the book detail page.

    Thanks for being a vital part of the Screen It First LLC community.

  • Feature Releases

    Curated Book Lists / School Reading Lists

    August 2023

    Search Notices

    September 2023

    Advanced Search / Filters

    December 2023

    Save Book Lists

    TBD

    Browser Extension

    TBD

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