After passage of an updated and draconian book ban by the Tennessee Legislature in July, a single school district in the state has removed over 400 books from school libraries deeming them as “appealing to the prurient interest.”
Books pulled from shelves range from graphic novels and picture books to acclaimed titles by authors Toni Morrison, Jodi Picoult, Angie Thomas, John Green, and Dr. Seuss.
The long list of books removed from libraries in Wilson County Schools is now being distributed to other school districts in the state as a “resource” for librarians and administrators to “strongly consider” as they review their own collections under the updated state law, according to reporting from local news site Clarksville Now.
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The new law, which went into effect July 1, expands the 2022 Age-Appropriate Materials Act by prohibiting public school libraries from having books with “nudity, or descriptions or depictions of sexual excitement, sexual conduct, excess violence, or sadomasochistic abuse,” or any book that is “patently offensive … or appeals to the prurient interest.”
The books banned in Wilson County include popular novels like the Netflix-adapted One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The Umbrella Academy comic book series by Gerard Way, Wacky Wednesday by Dr. Seuss, and Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes, which is the most frequently banned book of the 2023-2024 school year, according to PEN America’s latest report.
The same school year saw a dramatic 200% increase in banned books in schools nationwide with 10,046 titles removed from library shelves.
Dozens of graphic novels, manga, and picture books by award-winning authors are among the titles removed by Wilson County Schools officials, including The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, Hunter X Hunter by Yoshihiro Tagashi, and No, David by David Shannon. The district says the removals are part of “an ongoing process” with the potential for even more books banned in the future.
One Wilson County high school shut down its library at the beginning of the school year to accommodate the removal process.
The Tennessee Association of School Librarians reported in September that over 1,100 books have been removed from public schools since HB 843 went into effect.
Efforts to ban books that have swept the country in recent years have largely targeted books by and about people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community, with conservatives attempting to paint the titles as “pornographic.” According to a recent report from the Tennessee Equality Project, seven out of nine of the most challenged books in the state have queer themes or were written by an LGBTQ+ author.
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