‘Bigots’ vs. ‘groomers’

This year has seen a record number of attempts to restrict access to books nationwide. One side calls it Puritanical censorship and bigotry; the other, age-appropriate curation of what amounts to “pornographic indoctrination” between book covers.

Book bans have surged 33 percent over last school year, which was itself a historic year for the culling of books from shelves and curricula, according to PEN America, a century-old nonprofit devoted to free expression. The issue has gained traction in the lead-up to hotly contested Nov. 7 school board races in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

In New Jersey, a parent’s complaint about language, sexual and drug-use content in the young adult novel, The Upside of Unrequited, which features an interracial family and several LGBTQ+ characters, resulted in the Sparta Township Public School District removing the book from the middle school library against the advice of its own review committee, then rewriting its policy for acquiring new reading material to restrict “lewd or vulgar content.”

In Pennsylvania, at the Wallenpaupack Area High School library, which serves Pike and Wayne counties, five titles have been challenged, two by Jasmine Ruiz, vice-chair of the Pike County chapter of Moms for Liberty. Perks of Being a Wallflower, Out of Darkness and We Are the Ants have been reviewed, and “[we] have found educational merit in keeping those books within our libraries,” said Wallenpaupack Area School District Superintendent Keith Gunuskey. “We are currently in the review process for The Kite Runner and On the Bright Side. All of our books continue to remain accessible to our students,” he said.

In New York, a children’s picture book at the Albert Wisner Public Library in Warwick, NY, was challenged and ultimately retained in the collection.

The wave of challenges, which started in public schools, is now hitting public libraries as well.

“I’m trying to be Switzerland, and keep this library a welcoming, safe space for everybody, including the person who brought the challenge and the people who agree with them,” said Library Director Lisa Laico. “If we’re doing our jobs right, there’ll be something here to offend everyone. That’s how you know you’ve got a broad collection aimed at the diversity that is your community.”

“I do think this is a pivotal time,” said Joanna Goldfarb, youth services and sustainability innovation consultant at the Ramapo-Catskill Library System. “I will say this is not the first time we have had a wave of book bans. You know, it happens every so often. These types of issues, they ebb and flow, but this one, it seems to be an extreme case,” she said. The current threat to intellectual freedom is the most extreme she has seen in her decade as a librarian, and needs to be taken seriously, she said. “Right now it’s falling on library staff, but who knows where it’s going to go next.”

None of the challenges of which she was aware throughout the Ramapo-Catskill system had resulted in the removal of a book, said Goldfarb. She was unwilling to name specific libraries that had seen recent challenges, for fear of copycats or reprisals – illustrating a chilling effect that this reporter found widespread among educators and librarians contacted for this story.

“As much as I would like to say yeah, these communities are under attack, it’s a trying time for library staff. It doesn’t just stop with books. Around the country library staff are being personally attacked. People are finding them on Facebook, people are finding out where they live,” said Goldfarb. “It puts the staff in danger, and I do not want to do that.”

The snowball phenomenon: from book complaint to culture clash

Often book challenges go through a review process and fizzle with little ado. But sometimes a single parent’s objection to one particular volume can snowball into an all-out culture clash.

The book battle – along with the equally prickly questions of how sex ed is taught and the privacy rights of transgender students – has dominated school board meetings and carved a schism down the middle of affluent Sparta.

The face-off culminated at the Oct. 19 school board meeting that saw impassioned speeches on both sides, tears, name-calling, security escorting a man away from the mic, and an unprecedented staff declaration of a vote of no confidence in five members of the school board. The vote of no confidence was announced by Angela DeLuccia, longtime high school librarian and president of the Sparta Education Association, after the board rescinded a state policy aimed at protecting transgender students from being outed to their parents.

For “propagating politics despite the board’s oath to nonpartisanship... these board members are overstepping their authority,” said DeLuccia. She called the board out for a number of actions, including “attempts to remove gender and sexuality from the curriculum [and] removing books that reference LGBTQ+ community despite committee recommendations.”

Two placards held by women in the front row of the packed audience read, “No porn in schools,” and “Groom dogs not kids,” a reference to the narrative that children are being “sexualized” at school.

These escalating disputes, which regularly end up involving lawyers, are not only time consuming but expensive.

Sussex County has some of the highest property taxes in the U.S., said Sparta parent Scott Knoll at the October school board meeting. “That was the price we chose to pay,” he said. “Here’s the thing: I’m paying the taxes to pay the teachers, to pay the librarians, to pay the administrators to do their jobs. But this board is saying yes, you have to pay the taxes and pay more – but sex ed, you’re on your own. The library? We the board decide what’s on the shelves, not our award-winning librarians with master’s degrees and years of experience,” he said. “Stop undermining my child’s education. Stop attacking my rights as a parent, stop wasting my money, and please stop engaging on the wrong side of every social issue.”

In the beginning was the book

Sparta’s latest book battle started with an e-mail from Christina Korines, a politically active mom of an 11-year-old, objecting to a young adult novel available at the Sparta Middle School library. The Upside of Unrequited is peppered with language (including liberal use of the F word) and content (including discussion of sex, use of pills and underage drinking) that’s inappropriate for children, Korines argued.

Although the book was marked with an “8,” meaning only eighth graders could take it home, students like her 11-year-old daughter could read it in the library, she said at a February school board meeting.

“How is this appropriate for children?” Korines asked. “How am I unreasonable for asking you guys to put these books in a selective place? Nobody asked for a book ban,” she said. “They have completely spun the narrative to say this is trying to ban books,” said Korines, of the school staff’s response.

The particulars cited by Korines – curse word tallies and instances of sex and drug use by page number – are now available in a couple of clicks on a website, BookLooks.org. Launched in 2022 by an alumna of Moms for Liberty, the book rating site uses a rubric similar to the movie rating system. The site includes language saying it does not support book banning, but as a kind of CliffsNotes of “objectionable content,” it has become the go-to resource for anyone seeking to challenge a book. Upside earned a rating of 3 out of 5 on the site, placing it into the category “Minor Restricted, under 18 requires the guidance of a parent.”

The Sparta school board voted to move the book from the middle to the high school library, overruling the recommendation of the district’s seven-person review committee, which spent about 70 man-hours of reading and discussion on the question, according to librarian DeLuccia. The board then went further, rewriting its decades-old book reviewal policy over the objections of its own English department – along with the New Jersey School Librarians Association and The National Coalition Against Censorship – to include a restriction on “erotic/pornographic content or excessive profanity.” The five district librarians weren’t consulted on the new policy, though they had written to the board expressing their willingness to meet over the summer, said DeLuccia.

In the final version, a paragraph was added to the new policy: “The fact of sexual incidents or profanity appearing shall not automatically disqualify a book... Many works of literature important in our culture contain isolated elements to which some individuals may objects.” The additional language came as a relief to the head of the English department, parents and First Amendment watchdogs who feared Sparta was headed down a path of hardcore censorship like other school districts from Florida State to Bucks County, PA. Still, the atmosphere remains tense.

The constant chatter about this or that book creates “an aura of almost paranoia,” said DeLuccia. “You wonder if the books will come back sometimes. It does take up a lot more rent in my brain than it should. There has been chatter online – some people don’t like a book, so they’re going to take a book, steal a book. We are on a limited budget, so you just don’t know. It creates a lot of unnecessary what-if scenarios.”

How Sparta’s new policy will play out on library shelves, time will tell. Most of the district’s book ordering had been done prior to the change, said DeLuccia. The district librarians planned to start discussing the next round of book acquisitions in November, she said.

Patty Rivas, head of Sussex County chapter of Moms Demand Action, a group against gun violence, believes Korines’ book objection was a strategic one, “right out of the playbook” of far-right groups. Korines previously started a change.org petition in June 2022 urging the Sparta BOE to vote down the new statewide sex education standards, which she described as “extreme and age inappropriate” – another contentious district-wide debate that remains unresolved a year and a half later.

“It’s really not a problem for my own children,” said Rivas, of the loss of the book from the middle school library, “because I make sure that I’m raising my kids to understand the world around them and other peoples lived experiences. We’re endangering a group of people who may not feel included or like they don’t have resources. Growing up in Sparta, it was a very white town, and the diversity is thank goodness increasing. But we’re not an inclusive community. That’s my fear: diversity might be on the rise, but the way that we are embracing this change is really disappointing. For people who don’t have others that look like them or have same gender identities, books are a place they can turn to for validation. Adolescence is a hard time for everybody. Then you look at other countries, and what’s happening around the world, and book bans are the start of a very slippery slope.”

The removal of Upside from the middle school library was the second successful book challenge the district has seen in as many years. Sparta entered the book battles last year, with the pulling of Ghost Boys, about a police killing of a Black boy, from a seventh- and eighth-grade reading list. Parents had complained that the book was “propaganda and race baiting” that “perpetuates a dangerous narrative.”

‘Cloaked in Jesus and love’

Thirty miles northeast, a controversy over Gender Queer – a coming-of-age graphic novel by a nonbinary author that was the most-banned book of 2022 – played a hand in the resignation last year of the openly gay superintendent of the Florida Union Free School District in Orange County, NY.

Though it had been checked out only once, according to a school board member, the book would become fodder for social media posts and its most explicit panels replicated on handouts, as part of what former superintendent Larry Leaven described as a campaign of harassment spearheaded by a small cohort associated with Orange County Moms for Liberty.

“She’s probably one of the most dangerous people around,” he said of Lisa King Morgan, whom he described as the ringleader of the crusade against him. “She’s cloaked in, you know, Jesus and love and all this, and the reality is she is so far from that.”

“Any concerns I have expressed are mine in the capacity of a concerned mother of two young children,” said Morgan, an administrator on the Orange County Moms for Liberty Facebook page.

“I am unwilling to invest time or emotion entertaining the continuation of fanatical, unfounded fantasies expressed by a former superintendent,” said Morgan. “If the book was appropriate for an intermediate school serving grades six (approximately 12 years old) through 12th grade, why was Mr. Leaven so upset by members of the public seeing the book?”

Morgan referred this reporter to a police report from one tumultuous school board meeting at which Leaven confiscated a pile of handouts — which included photocopies from Gender Queer — that Morgan was distributing, an act that prompted her to call the police. “Larry was noticeably growing disgruntled watching the public flip through the packets in utter disgust,” said King. “A reasonable person would realize the packets were prepared by the community for the community, with the intention of all who sought the information to take one — Larry chose to take them all.”

“They kind of went through the scripts of Moms for Liberty, and that was one of their scripts,” said Leaven, who resigned last November. “If they didn’t find Gender Queer in the Florida library, they would have worked to find another book, and I’m sure they’re finding many books now that are hurting their feelings,” said Leaven, who now works as an education consultant in New York City. From New York to Oklahoma to Texas, he said, “If you just lay out the issues at all of these school boards, you’re going to see the same things. These are not unique or thoughtful agendas that they have. It’s cookie cutter, cookie cutter.”

During his 15-month tenure at Florida, Leaven received between 300 and 400 emails from Morgan, he said, and if he didn’t reply within two hours, received another call or e-mail. “First it was masks, then it was the threat of vaccinations, then it was the next thing, then it was the books. You could barely keep up because she would read something – whatever it was, true or false – then she would react, reach out, expect a response,” he said. “It’s almost like you needed a PR person... It really diminishes the ability to serve, because you’re there to serve children.”

In his position now, Leaven works in schools in New York City, where pride flags and coming-out-days are normal parts of school life. “You see kids joyfully seeing themselves in their community,” said Leaven. “It was really emotional for me to watch middle schoolers, who are goofy and exploring themselves. And it’s able to be done without fear and hate, it’s able to be done with curiosity and wonder. It’s just beautiful – and heartbreaking – when I know that there are children in Florida or Warwick or other communities who are feeling that they’re not worthy or they are not seen, or there’s a group of people who want to make them invisible.”

An organized campaign

Though book challenges come from individuals in disparate locations, nearly three-quarters stem from some kind of organized effort, according to PEN America, whether new legislation, a push by an elected official or an advocacy group.

The heaviest hitter among advocacy groups in the book battles is Moms for Liberty. Founded by three school board moms down in Florida State to push back against Covid mask and vaccine mandates, the group’s influence has skyrocked in three years of existence. In June, Moms for Liberty was designated an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, for seeking to undermine public education and to divide communities, a designation the group’s founders called an effort “aimed at marginalizing and discrediting the serious concerns of our members about the public K-12 education system.”

The group has chapters in Orange County, NY and Pike County, PA. An email to Pike County Moms for Liberty Chairman Kerry Williams received no response.

Pennsylvania has emerged as a Moms for Liberty stronghold, with the most chapters of any state except Florida. A contiguous band of 21 county chapters covers the eastern half of the Keystone State, from Pike County in the northeast to Franklin County in the south to Bucks County in the southeast – book ban forerunner and birthplace of the anonymous website “Woke Pennsylvania” (tagline: Parents Against Grooming) which includes a database of “sexualized books in schools.”

Opting out: the middle way

What often gets lost in the hullabaloo is the consensus from both sides that parents who object to a book have the right to prevent their own kids from reading it – just not other people’s kids.

“If a parent finds something objectionable in our curriculum that their child is studying, they reach out to the teacher and speak to the department chair. That child would then get an alternative assignment in lieu of the content the parent found objectionable. A parent can do similarly if they don’t wish to have their child take a particular book out of the library,” said Delaware Valley School District Superintendent Dr. Brian Blaum, of the opt-out option.

“We have not had any book challenges this school year, however we have had parents and members of the public question books in previous years,” added Blaum.

In October, a mom of a ninth grader at Delaware Valley High School in Pike County, Pa. posted on a parents’ page that she had opted her ninth grade child out of the assigned book, Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, narrated by a high school freshman rape survivor. “It is my responsibility to explain to my child the importance of consensual sex, and I can and have done it far more effectively than this book can,” she wrote in her post.

As an alternative, her son was assigned Fahrenheit 451 – which some commenters to her post found ironic, since the latter is about a dystopia in which books are burned. But the mother – who agreed to meet up on terms of anonymity – objected to the book on more nuanced grounds. The book had been on her radar after another parent posted about it the previous year; and after staying up one night until 2 a.m. to read it herself, she made the call.

She felt that it normalized things like ninth graders sneaking out and drinking, lackluster parenting and even to a certain extent, rape – since the perpetrator never faced consequences. Besides which, it did not strike her as a great work of literature, its vocabulary unimpressive – and the class was spending six entire weeks discussing it, she said.

“Time is such a commodity. We don’t have that much time. So what do you do with that time?,” said the mom. “I want him to grow and be challenged.”

She posted her decision on social media, hoping to inspire other parents who might be on the fence, so that her son would have a classmate or two with whom to discuss Fahrenheit 451, a more challenging read than Speak. There were no other takers. But she and he are reading and discussing the Ray Bradbury classic together, which has been an unexpected pleasure. “This brought me closer together with my child,” she said. “Because who does that these days with their teenager?”

As for the irony, the mom saw it too – but the other way: that those who supported a book about finding your voice, when she used hers, dismissed her as an ignorant book-banner. “Here I am speaking up and I’m getting judged from the same people who are advocating speaking up,” she said. “I don’t want them to ban the book. I don’t know if some books belong in the curriculum, but that’s my opinion,” she said. “The irony for me is I’m more like Montag,” the protagonist of Fahrenheit 451, who begins to question the government that “wants us all to be the same. The irony is, I’m thinking for myself,” she said. “We talk about diversity so much, but we want everybody to be the same.”

She thought long and hard about whether to speak to this reporter, and decided to go ahead and meet up in person. Why? Why put yourself out there?

“I guess I would love for the story to get people to stop and think. Before we can teach our kids to be better versions of themselves, we can’t dismiss ourselves. We have to be better – more kind, more respectful,” she said. “We have to recognize that we’re not managing it effectively if we’re just all up in arms.”