Book challenges and bans are increasing in libraries and schools throughout the United States. To help spread the word about these activities and efforts to combat them by librarians, parents, students, politicians, and concerned citizens, I Love Libraries will frequently highlight several stories on the current crisis. This roundup includes news from Michigan, South Carolina, Missouri, and Kansas.

Book challenges shot down by Michigan school district

After a lengthy review process, 13 challenged books will stay on the shelves in the high school media center at St. Joseph (Mich.) Public Schools (SJPS), reports 94.9 WSJM. A committee made up of administrators, teachers, and district parents spent more than 120 hours reviewing the books and found that the titles “were suited to the wide range of interests reflecting the abilities and maturity levels of the students served,” according to St. Joseph Public Schools Assistant Superintendent Kristen Bawks.

“The committee examined and evaluated the materials as a whole, not on the basis of passages being pulled out of context,” Bawks said. “Criteria used for the evaluation and assessment were gleaned from the American Library Association and the Michigan benchmarks for school libraries in the 21st century.”

“The decision allows our students to have access to books that are really important for their growth [and] their development and preparation,” said SJPS Superintendent Jenny Fee. “The books in our collection are windows to the outside world. They allow our kids to see things they can’t see without that book and to understand things in our greater world. At the same time, they are mirrors … although the books might be disagreeable, or they might be uncomfortable, those are important things for our kids to be able to navigate through if they need to.”

Parents, school staff speak out about book banning movement across South Carolina

On November 7, the Horry County (S.C.) school board approved a recommendation to create a district-wide media advisory committee that would approve every book that comes into the district library. Every school will have its own media advisory board as well. The decision moved local parents and Horry County school district staff members to speak out against the revised policy on Monday, reports The Sun News.

“Having a school-level library media advisory committee that has to approve every book purchase is harmful to the betterment of the library collection and is a bit belittling to your school librarians who work very hard to know the student population as a whole and try to make the collection as strong as it can be,” said Meredith Richie, a school librarian at Blackwater Middle School.

Comment period opens on Missouri’s book ban proposal

Missouri libraries and the public at-large can now formally weigh in on an attempt by Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft to block public funding for libraries offering books that might “appeal to the sexual interests of minors,” reports the St. Louis Post Dispatch. The proposed rule would require Missouri’s 160 public libraries to adopt policies on the age-appropriateness of literature. Under the rule, anyone could challenge access to books, and libraries that violate the rules could lose state funding-more than $3.5 million in the coming fiscal year.

A 30-day comment period designed to let the public air concerns began Tuesday, November 15. The comments could cause the rule to be reworked or go before a panel of lawmakers who could vote to send the matter to the full Missouri House and Senate.

The proposal has received pushback from the public already. The Missouri Library Association called the rule “an infringement on the professional judgment of librarians, and an effort to further stoke division in the communities that libraries serve.”

A Kansas library’s lease is in jeopardy over an LGBTQ+ book

Controversies over books on racial, gender, and sexual identity may cost a small town in Kansas its library, reports the Topeka Capital-Journal.

In St. Marys, the local library’s refusal to remove Alex Gino’s book, Melissa, about a fourth grader who is grappling with her gender identity, has sharply divided the community of 2,700 people, and led to calls that the town should separate itself from Pottawatomie Wabaunsee Regional Library system.

The book prompted city commission members to propose adding a “morals clause” to the library’s lease that would require any books on “divisive matters,” including LGBTQ+ and racial issues, be removed. The effort was abandoned, but it did not stop debate over whether the city should open its own library and remove the regional branch, which is part of a system funded by taxpayers in Pottawatomie and Wabaunsee counties.

The idea has drawn pushback from library staff and members of the community.

“We spend our whole career trying to take care of everyone that comes in our door,” Pottawatomie Wabaunsee Regional Library Director Judith Cremer said at a November 15 meeting at St. Mary’s City Hall. “And you’re fighting a moral battle here, but we aren’t in the battle. It may be out there, but it’s not at the public library. If you’re at the library, find some of those books for me because I know they’re not there. We’re not putting anybody in danger, we never started a battle.”

Take action

Alarmed by the escalating attempts to censor books? Here are five steps you can take now to protect the freedom to read.

1. Follow news and social media in your community and state to keep apprised of organizations working to censor library or school materials.
2. Show up for library workers at school or library board meetings and speak as a library advocate and community stakeholder who supports a parent’s right to restrict reading materials for their own child but not for all
3. Help provide a safety net for library professionals as they defend intellectual freedom in their communities by giving to the LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund.
4. Educate friends, neighbors, and family members about censorship and how it harms communities. Share information from Banned Books Week 2021.
5. Join the Unite Against Book Bans movement to learn what you can do to defend the freedom to read in your community.

Book challenges and bans are increasing in libraries and schools throughout the United States. To help spread the word about these activities and efforts to combat them by librarians, parents, students, politicians, and concerned citizens, I Love Libraries will frequently highlight several stories on the current crisis. This roundup includes news from Florida, Maryland, South Carolina, and an editorial from an award-winning librarian who’s experienced the effects of books bans firsthand.

Florida School District Quietly Banning or Removing Books from School Libraries

FlaglerLive has found that Flagler County (Fla.) school district has been quietly banning or removing books from library shelves in four local schools, despite the implementation of a policy intended to balance parents’ rights to prohibit their own children from accessing certain library books while preserving the right of full access for others. The policy was instituted last summer after a Flagler County school board member sought to ban four books from school libraries and filed a criminal complaint against the superintendent for allowing alleged obscenity to be on library shelves.

Book Banning Resonates as an Issue in Maryland School Board Races

School board candidates who intend to remove books dealing with gender identity, racism, and other socially sensitive topics from school library shelves are running in almost half of Maryland’s counties, reports The Maryland Reporter. The conservative candidates also oppose books dealing with critical race theory, claiming that the books “indoctrinate” readers.

These conservative school board candidates are in the minority, however. About 25% of the 102 candidates who responded to a Capital News Service survey said they favor banning some controversial books from school libraries, but about 41% opposed doing so.

Book Banning Attempt Defeated After Community Stands Up for LGBTQ People

LGBTQ Nation reports that Greenville County (S.C.) Council has voted to keep LGBTQ books accessible to children at the public library-repudiating an attempt by a city councilor to require the local library system to remove books “promoting sexuality” from all children’s sections.

Councilor Joe Dill’s resolution claimed it was seeking to “protect the innocence of children.” It would have required libraries to submit a report to the council detailing “how such books ever found their way into the Children’s Sections … and what measures have been put into place to ensure such oversights do not occur in the future.”

The School Library Used to be a Sanctuary. Now It’s a Battleground.

Martha Hickson, recipient of the American Library Association’s 2022 Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced With Adversity and the National Coalition Against Censorship’s Outstanding Librarian Award for her work defending the right to read, writes for CNN: “In September 2021, protesters ambushed the board meeting of the New Jersey school district where I have worked as a high school librarian since 2005. The protesters railed against Gender Queer, a memoir in graphic novel form by Maia Kobabe, and Lawn Boy, a coming-of-age novel by Jonathan Evison. They spewed selected sentences from the Evison book, while brandishing isolated images from Kobabe’s.

“Next, they attacked Banned Books Week, an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. The protesters characterized it as a nefarious plot to lure kids to degradation.

“But the real sucker punch came when one protester branded me a pedophile, pornographer and groomer of children. After a successful career, with retirement on the horizon, to be cast as a villain was heartbreaking.”

Hickson continues: “Sitting on the sidelines and sympathizing with lambasted librarians is not enough. Community members must take action to pin book banners to the mat. Otherwise, the First Amendment will be down for the count.”

Take Action

Alarmed by the escalating attempts to censor books? Here are five steps you can take now to protect the freedom to read.

1. Follow news and social media in your community and state to keep apprised of organizations working to censor library or school materials.
2. Show up for library workers at school or library board meetings and speak as a library advocate and community stakeholder who supports a parent’s right to restrict reading materials for their own child but not for all
3. Help provide a safety net for library professionals as they defend intellectual freedom in their communities by giving to the LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund.
4. Educate friends, neighbors, and family members about censorship and how it harms communities. Share information from Banned Books Week 2021.
5. Join the Unite Against Book Bans movement to learn what you can do to defend the freedom to read in your community.

R. L. Stine has been scaring kids for 30 years with his Goosebumps series of horror books for young readers. But Goosebumps might not have existed without a librarian. Stine credits a librarian in Columbus, Ohio, with introducing him to Ray Bradbury and other writers as a youth. He says their works scared and mesmerized him, turning him into a lifelong reader and eventually a writer.

This Banned Books Week is the perfect time for readers of all ages to escape into Stine’s gleefully terrifying books. Goosebumps has been challenged and banned in some schools and libraries across the U.S. over concerns that its stories can be too scary for kids. For some, that’s the point.

“Fear is at the heart of Goosebumps, a series that acts in the same way that immunizations do, and it’s just as mandatory for children’s health,” says author Alissa Nutting. “It gives them a small dose of scary and lets them produce needed antibodies towards fear, book after book, so that they slowly become less affected.”

But what about those kids who find Goosebumps to be too scary? They most likely won’t read them, says Nuttig.

“Children who aren’t ready to read them or don’t want to read them likely won’t,” she says. “At Johnsonville Elementary School in Blaine, Minnesota (one school where [Goosebumps was] challenged), the principal defended the series by stating that while his eleven-year-old son reads them furiously, his ten-year-old daughter chooses not to touch them. She knows that for her, they would not be a positive experience. Kids can choose.”

Ensuring that readers have access to stories that speak to them-or sometimes frighten them-is at the heart of Banned Books Week. Learn more about how to help us fight for the freedom to read for readers of all ages!

And now, a few words from R. L. Stine:

Photo: R. L. Stine speaks at ALA’s Annual Conference and Exhibition in Washington, D.C., on June 25, 2022. Credit: EPNAC

Talk about really loving libraries! Romance novelist Nora Roberts donated $50,000 to Patmos Library in Jamestown Township, Michigan, after the library was defunded by the community in early August over LGBTQ-themed books. The donation pushed the cumulative total raised by two GoFundMe campaigns to more than $245,000-the amount the library was expected to lose next year due to the loss of taxpayer funding.

On August 2, an operating millage that provides 84% of Patmos Library’s annual budget was defeated. Without the $245,000 the millage provides annually, the library was expected to have to close by the fall of 2023. The campaign against the library was organized by community members upset by LGBTQ-themed graphic novels in the library, including Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, Kiss Number 8 by writer Colleen AF Venable and illustrator Ellen T. Crenshaw, and Spinning by Tillie Walden. The library refused to remove the books but did move Gender Queer behind the counter so patrons would have to request it.

In a comment left on the GoFundMe page which Roberts contributed to, the bestselling author of more than 225 novels under her own name and the pseudonym J.D. Robb, wrote that she would have donated more, but “50k is the limit GoFundMe allows for donations. If you’re short of your goal, please contact me. I’ll make up the rest.”

Roberts has sold more than 500 million books worldwide. She has donated more than $50 million to various causes, including through the Nora Roberts Foundation, which supports literacy, children’s programs, the arts, and humanitarian efforts.