A picture book in which a girl teaches her brother about the joys of reading was flagged by a public library system in Alabama. According to AL.com, the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library (HCPL) was among the books that could be moved from the children's section due to “sexually explicit” content.
There is nothing sexually explicit in "Read Me A Story, Stella" — it's a children's book about reading — but the author's last name is Gay.
The censoring of the book was an error, and the library has no plans to move the book, but the fact that the book was mistakenly flagged has still alarmed some people.
"Although it is obviously laughable that our picture book shows up on their list of censored books simply because the author’s last name is Gay, the ridiculousness of that fact should not detract from the seriousness of the situation,” said Gay's publicist, Kirsten Brassard.
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Brassard added that there were other books on the list that were not sexual in any way, including The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. The Hate U Give is about a teenager who comes from a poor neighborhood but goes to school in a wealthy suburban community. In the book, her (unarmed) childhood friend gets shot by a police officer. Book review magazine Kirkus Reviews wrote, "This story is necessary. This story is important."
Cindy Hewitt, the library system's executive director said Read Me a Story, Stella was placed on the list by mistake. “We understand and appreciate our community, and the needs of our collection to reflect our community,” Hewitt said to AL.com. "We were never eliminating any book. We were just looking at it as a whole.”
The process of moving the flagged books from the children's section to the adult section was stopped due to complaints that it was targeting the LGBTQ community, according to AL.com.
Hewitt claimed that the goal was to have some level of control over the library's materials. She wanted to be "proactive instead of reactive" and move some materials around instead of having an outside group or organization make those kinds of decisions about the library's materials.
“We wanted to be proactive and allow our library staff to look at our collection and make decisions about moving material to an older age group and not have someone from outside dictating that for us,” she told AL.com.
In other words, they were trying to prepare to be challenged by organizations like Clean Up Alabama, which claims to "tidy up Alabama libraries" by "advocating for a safe and enriching environment in the children’s sections of our public libraries." But what exactly does the group mean by "safe and enriching?"
The organization's website says: "In the past few years, many Alabama libraries have been stocking their shelves with books intended to confuse the children of our communities about sexuality and expose them to material that is inappropriate for them."
AL.com reported that Hewitt asked library branch managers to use the following keywords when flagging books: “sexuality, gender, sex, and dating.” The outlet also found that the majority of books on the list of books to review at one of the library system's branches had "lesbian, gay, transgender, gender identity, or gender non-conforming" in the subject header.
