School book challenges, already on rise, could escalate in Florida
A Clay County father who’d already urged the removal of dozens of books from his local public schools warned state officials in November that they needed to weed out the “poison” from school library shelves.
He had a list of more than 3,600 books with “concerning content,” Bruce Friedman told a Florida Department of Education group tasked with recommending library rules.
“Clean up this mess,” he warned, “or like I’m doing locally, we’ll take them down one book at a time.”
He wasn’t bluffing about what he was doing in his home county. The Clay school district now has a list of about 400 books that have been challenged as inappropriate, with 90% of the objections filed by Friedman.
Among the books on the challenged list are award-winning novels by Toni Morrison and Kurt Vonnegut, best sellers like “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and even a picture book by Eric Carle, author and illustrator of the beloved “The Very Hungry Caterpillar.” About 100 have already been yanked from school libraries, according the district’s “reconsideration” list.
Critics blame a trio of 2022 Florida laws for the book challenges in Clay and other school districts. They fear the mid-size county in northeast Florida is a harbinger and that many more school libraries will face the same intense, and, in their view, unnecessary, scrutiny in the coming school year.
The Legislature took a final vote this week on new legislation, expected to be signed by Gov. DeSantis, that makes book challenges easier and, if the concern is sexual content, requires the books to be removed from the shelves within five days and remain inaccessible to students while being reviewed.
“Clay County is going to be the model,” said Kathleen Daniels, president of the Florida Association for Media in Education and a media specialist at a Hillsborough County middle school.
It worries her and other school librarians that “the voices of a very few” are dictating reading options for thousands of students, she said, with small numbers of people filing objections that do not represent the views of most parents but lead to hundreds of books pulled from shelves.
A parent’s way to opt out
The Clay County school district this school year advertised a new “individualized school library access plan” that allows parents concerned about library books to ban library access completely for their children, limit what books their kids can borrow from school libraries or request emails with any checked-out titles.
Four parents filed out the form to date, said Terri Dennis, a spokesperson for the district, in an email. Clay schools enroll about 39,200 students.
The Lake County school district instituted a similar program, and five parents asked to restrict library access for their children.
Supporters of the legislation argue they aren’t eager to ban books, just to keep inappropriate material from children.
“We’re not banning every book in the library,” said Sen. Clay Yarborough, R-Jacksonville, sponsor of the Senate’s version of this year’s bill. “There are materials that are pornographic. There are materials that depict sexual activity,” he said before the Senate vote. “School districts should be held accountable for that.”
Critics, however, say the Republican-led effort has wrongly labeled many books pornographic, when state law says, in part, that books with sexual content or nudity are considered pornography only if they are “without serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
The GOP-led efforts have resulted in a few books with sexually explicit illustrations, such as “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” and the sex education book “Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human,” being pulled from schools.
They also meant children’s storybooks that mention same-sex parents, graphic novels that discuss racism and award-winning literature, like Morrison’s “Beloved” were removed, too.
The bill now waiting for DeSantis’ signature (HB 1069) expands the Parental Rights in Education law passed last year — the one dubbed “don’t say gay” by critics — so that instruction in sexual orientation and gender identity is banned in higher grades and teachers and students face restrictions on using chosen pronouns.
It also focuses on books, saying districts must put an “easy to read and understand” book challenge form on the homepage of their websites.
“Once HB1069 is effective, this will all get a lot worse,” said Stephana Ferrell, a co-founder of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, in a message.
The project, started by Ferrell and another Orange County mother, opposes the new state laws and works to keep track of attempted book bans across Florida.
“We have an education system that is now rushing to judgment on books,” Ferrell said.
The books being pulled from school shelves are not part of classroom lessons, she noted, but ones available for students who want them for independent reading. “These books are not being forced on our kids,” she said. “They are just books on a shelf.”
Last year, Florida passed three laws that restrict instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in primary grades, ban instruction on some race-related topics and heighten scrutiny of school library collections. In January, the State Board of Education adopted a rule to enforce the library law, urging educators to “err on the side of caution” when selecting books and classifying teacher’s classroom book collections as libraries that would face the same scrutiny as the school library.
In the wake of those laws, the Lake school district pulled “And Tango Makes Three,” a picture book based on a true story of two male penguins in Central Park Zoo who raised a chick together. The Seminole County school district decided “Jacob’s New Dress,” a storybook about a boy who wants to wear a dress to school, could not be available in the primary grades.
The Duval County school district for months kept from students books about baseball legends Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron, until staff could review them and make sure they complied with state laws. Both books, now back on shelves, touched on the racism the two baseball stars encountered in their lives and Major League careers.
The Florida School for the Deaf and Blind reported it removed several children’s picture books because they depicted families with same-sex parents, according to a report from the Florida Department of Education, obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project through a public records request.
One was “The Family Book” by bestselling children’s author Todd Parr, pulled because it says, “Some families have two moms or two dads.”
Several districts, including Lake and Osceola County’s, pulled “Looking for Alaska,” saying it was inappropriate because of sexual content found on several pages of the young adult novel. The book’s award-winning author John Green, best known as the writer of “The Fault in Our Stars,” objects to such challenges.
“They remove one section of the book from all of its context,” Green told columnist Scott Maxwell in February. “And of course, it looks horrible.”
Record year for book banning
In Florida, and nationwide, the number of attempts to ban books from school libraries jumped sharply last year, according to the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, which said it recorded more challenges in 2022 than in any other year since it started counting more than two decades ago.
Unlike in past years, when book challenges came from individual parents upset about something their child had read, most of the recent challenges come from “a well-organized conservative movement” that targets multiple books at once, often sharing lists so the same books are challenged in multiple school districts, the association wrote on its website. Many of the books challenged last year were written by or about LGBTQ people or non-white people, it added.
The Moms for Liberty group, a conservative organization that began in Florida, has led book challenges in many counties, with the Indian River County chapter saying on its Facebook page last year that it had 150 titles it wanted removed. In Orange County, a Moms for Liberty member Alicia Farrant, who won a seat on the school board in November, initiated most of her district’s challenges.
“No one is looking to ban books. Moms for Liberty certainly isn’t,” said Tiffany Justice, one of the group’s founders in an interview last month on Newsnation. But, she added, “just because a book is printed doesn’t mean that it belongs in a children’s library.”
Friedman, who could not be reached for comment, is the president of the Florida Chapter of No Left Turn in Education, a group that says it opposes “indoctrination” and “woke” policies in schools. He told the state panel he disliked books with sex, violence and what he viewed as other worrisome themes: “Porn, critical race theory, social emotional learning, fluid gender, pick your poison.”
Last year’s law required Florida school districts to put the content of elementary school libraries online for public searches. This year’s bill makes challenges easier, says if parents cannot read a book out loud at a school board meeting it should be pulled and requires that any accusation of sexual content means almost immediate removal.
“This ban first, review second is a terrible policy,” argued Sen. Tina Polsky, D-Boca Raton, on the Senate floor.
“Any resident in a county can bring forth complaints, unlimited complaints, there’s no bounds on why they can say they’re bad and, immediately, they’re going to be removed,” added Polsky, who voted “no.”
But Yarborough said the legislation enhances parents’ rights and protects children. “What’s wrong with them knowing what’s going on in the schools? I would argue nothing,” he said.
Daniels, the association president, said the new laws and rules and the frequency of book challenges have left media specialists, who are certified teachers trained to run libraries, feeling insulted and worried. Classroom teachers, whose bookshelves now face scrutiny, too, are also upset, and some are bringing their books home.
Daniels said she and other media specialists never mind if someone questions a book’s appropriateness. “I’m one person. I do make errors. If someone emails me to reconsider, that’s fine,” she said.
But they object to the assumption that teachers and school librarians are trying to do harm to children. In reality, she said, they spend hours selecting books for their schools, looking for age-appropriate titles that will interest the students on their campuses.
“Our only goal is to try to get kids to read,” she said.
