Busy Banning Books
TN school boards turn attention to making libraries smaller
Tennessee school boards are taking action - and banning books from school libraries.
Knox County Schools recently released a list of 48 books that are no longer allowed to appear in school libraries in the district.
The move comes after the Tennessee General Assembly passed the “Age Appropriate Materials” Act and after activist group Moms for Liberty focused attention on certain books.
Among the books banned from Knox County school libraries:
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Draw Me a Star by Eric Carle
The list contains 48 books that it says fail to comply with the Age Appropriate Materials Act, and is the first to be released to the public since new restrictions on library materials went into effect earlier this year. In July 2024, a Tennessee law adding specific restrictions to the Age Appropriate Materials Act was passed by the Tennessee legislature, requiring all Tennessee schools to remove books that did not meet new requirements from the shelves.
The Williamson County School Board voted to remove three books entirely and to restrict access to an additional book.
Ultimately, the board chose to leave "Speak" accessible to all high school-aged students and limit access to "The Field Guide to the North American Teenager" to high school juniors and seniors only.
“Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and “Where the Crawdads Sing” were all banned.
Rutherford County has removed six books from school library shelves and Wilson County has removed more than 400 books.
Among the books banned in Wilson County:
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut)
Seven books by Stephen King including The Green Mile and It
Peter Greene wrote recently about the return of book banning to American schools:
Or in Tennessee, where Knox County Schools has its new list of 48 books banned from all district buildings. The list contains the usuals like 13 Reasons Why and Perks of Being a Wallflower, plus works by Ellen Hopkins, there are some others as well. Like Draw Me A Star by Eric Carle, the collage artist who brought us the hungry, hungry caterpillar. But Draw Me A Star includes a pair of rough collage depictions of a nude man and woman (who look way less like a man and women than the hungry caterpillar looks like a caterpillar). If you know the work of architectural artists David McCauley, you may be aware that he did the same thing for the human body. Can't have that. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak is another frequent target because it shows a boy with a penis. Shel Silverstein's A Light In The Attic doesn't have any sex of LGBTQ content, but it's frequently targeted because it promotes disobedience. And there's Slaughterhouse Five, a longstanding feature on ban lists because there is a picture that uses a couple of rough circles to represent breasts (well, that and it's anti-war, but I'm sure that's not a problem). And something by Toni Morrison, because what's a ban list without something from one of our greatest authors.
A few thoughts:
TN is a state that ranks near the bottom in funding for and investment in schools. We have nearly $9 billion worth of unfunded school infrastructure projects. Our state’s teachers earn among the lowest salaries in the Southeast.
But, at least the books noted above won’t be available in school libraries anymore.
Also, in previous eras of book banning, removing books from library shelves meant removing access to them. Now, students have lists of books certain adults don’t think they should read - and, students have phones and other devices ready to get straight to the point: the “objectionable” passages.
In short, thanks to the General Assembly, school boards and systems are spending time and energy on an exercise that does little to advance the goal of improving educational opportunities for kids.
But maybe that’s the idea?
Why these school boards and legislators think they are banning books so no child will learn what they don't want them to. Our Church Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist in Knoxville has a diversity library open to anyone. It includes these banned books among many others.