Forced to comply with a new state law barring sexually explicit content and targeted by pressure campaigns from right-wing and religious groups, local school districts have purged hundreds of books from library shelves, often without the formal reviews available under their own policies. In the past year, more than 900 books exited North East Independent School District library shelves for failing to “meet selection criteria,” according to district records.
deleted last school year includes some of the most often banned nationwide, including “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson, “Out of Darkness” by Ashley Hope Perez, “Looking for Alaska” by John Green, “Thirteen Reasons Why” by Jay Asher, “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” by Jesse Andrews, “Crank” by Ellen Hopkins and “A Court of Mist and Fury” by Sarah J. Maas.
Director of Library Services Terri Sanchez. “It could be a case where a parent doesn’t that a book has LGBTQIA content, but we don’t ever remove books based on viewpoint,” she added.