Where It Stands: Fate of books pulled from Boiling Springs library still in administrative limbo

“All Boys Aren’t Blue” and “Last Night at the Telegraph Club” were among the five books the South Middleton School District pulled from the shelf in early fall 2023 pending an internal review.

“The work is not completed at this time,” Superintendent Kevin J. O’Donnell Jr. said recently. “We’re still going through the process.”

For each book, a separate committee has been formed to read the material and evaluate the content based on administrative guidelines, O’Donnell said. Each committee consists of two randomly selected faculty members and two parents of district students.

High school principal Erin Pittman coordinates the feedback process and meeting schedule of each committee, O’Donnell said. As the overall administrator in charge, Pittman must read all five books, he said.

Although the books were pulled from the shelf in fall 2023, the internal review only started over the summer and was complicated by a transition in high school leadership when then-principal Joel Hain resigned effective June 30.

Two months later, in early May, the South Middleton School Board appointed Pittman, then assistant principal, as high school principal. The district then had to find a replacement assistant for Pittman.

“This is a complex topic to legislate,” O’Donnell said recently, referring to the internal review. “I understand that, from the outside, it would look like it is taking an extended period, but we are also reading each one of those books and arranging meetings around them to get people to come in and share their feedback. It’s a work in progress. It’s still moving forward. It’s not something that just went away.”

In late March, local resident Carol Yanity spoke out against the district’s move to pull the books from the library. “They are not required reading, but they were available,” she told the school board. The titles were removed from the shelf because some people were uncomfortable with having these types of books available to students, she said.

Yanity focused her comments on “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson and “Last Night at the Telegraph Club” by Malinda Lo.

In a series of personal essays, Johnson explores his childhood and adolescence growing up as a gay Black man, according to a description from Macmillan Publishers.

The book by Lo is a historical fiction coming-of-age story about a Chinese American teenager learning to understand herself, her sexuality and her culture in 1954 San Francisco, according to a description on Barnes & Noble.

“The titles referenced were ones that were brought forward as a concern and have been set aside to hold for an internal review,” Jason Baker, assistant to the superintendent, said in late March. “We continue to refine our administrative regulations on this topic. Once the administrative regulations are complete, we will conduct the internal review and make a decision about the future of these particular titles utilizing the process outlined in the regulations.”

A few weeks later, during a meeting in early April, O’Donnell said it was not accurate to say that all five titles were pulled specifically because they were LGBTQ+. In an email, the district identified the other three books as “Damsel” by Elana Arnold, “House of Earth and Blood” by Sarah Maas, and “Identical” by Ellen Hopkins.

All five books depict physical relationships between characters and have been challenged in other school districts for their mature content. The focus of discussions in South Middleton has been on “All Boys Aren’t Blue” and “Last Night at the Telegraph Club.”

The decision to remove the books for review drew criticism from members of the Gender Sexuality Alliance Club at the high school and from Yanity and other property owners who work as educators in the Cumberland Valley School District.