The Elizabeth School District in Elbert County is pulling 19 books from their school library shelves for parental review that officials deemed too controversial, including a book entitled “It’s Your World — If You Don’t Like It, Change It: Activism for Teenagers.”
The new policy, first reported by Colorado Community Media, was unanimously approved by the Elizabeth school board during a Monday meeting.
The books that have been removed from shelves are:
- “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas,
- “Thirteen Reasons Why” by Jay Asher,
- “#Pride: Championing LGBTQ Rights “by Rebecca Felix,
- “You Should See Me in a Crown” by Leah Johnson,
- “It’s Your World — If You Don’t Like It, Change It: Activism for Teenagers” by Mikki Halpin,
- “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini,
- “Beloved” and “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison,
- “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky,
- “Looking for Alaska” by John Green,
- “Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi Picoult,
- “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson,
- “Identical,” “Fallout,” “Glass,” “Burned,” “Crank,” and “Smoke” by Ellen Hopkins, and
- “George” by Alex Gino .
A curriculum review committee of school board members, school staff and Elizabeth community members turned to online resources like banned book lists to determine what problematic books the four school libraries have, said Mary Powell, an Elizabeth school board member on the curriculum review committee, during the school board meeting. Then, the committee reviewed the books for graphic violence, sexual content, profanity/obscenity, ideations of self-harm or mental illness, religious viewpoints, drug or excessive alcohol use and racism/discrimination.
Powell said the removed books had “egregious” examples of those qualities.
“We need to be sure we are protecting our students from things that are controversial,” Powell said during the school board meeting.
The policy change also created a new tier of school library books for “sensitive topics.” So far, the district’s curriculum review committee flagged more than 130 books as “sensitive.” If a student checks out one of the “sensitive” books, an email is sent to the student’s parents alerting them. The parent has the option to restrict their kid’s library account, prohibiting the child from checking out books flagged as “sensitive.”
“We have talked about parents’ rights and responsibilities, and this is an important responsibility,” Powell said. “It’s their right to know what their child is checking out.”
Books on the “sensitive” list include “1984,” Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Hunger Games,” “Understanding Islam” and the Bible.
“We are trying to be very aware that not all of us in the school district have the same values,” Powell said. “A parent who does not want their child to read the Bible should be notified that their child checked out the Bible. A parent who doesn’t want their child to read the Quran should be notified that their child checked out the Quran.”
The list will be an evolving document, Powell said, as some books are added and others removed.
Superintendent Dan Snowberger said the policy changes came from parents in the community wanting to know what materials their children are accessing at school.
“We’re not banning books,” Snowberger said. “We’re not saying you can’t have books like this. But we are empowering parents who don’t want their kids to have a book like this to opt out…I think we are trying to be very reasonable.”
During the meeting, Powell encouraged parents to get involved and fill out a form for a book to be reviewed if they believe it has questionable content. She asked parents to look at the books marked for removal because she wanted them “to be shocked, too.”
“We are doing this for the protection of our children,” Powell said.
Colorado’s public libraries have seen a rising number of requests to ban or restrict access to books, programs or displays, mirroring trends across the country as conservative movements target books and programming with LGBTQ and race-related themes.
Data from the American Library Association in 2023 showed 142 titles were challenged in 12 separate attempts to restrict access to books in Colorado libraries. In 2022, the association reported 56 titles were challenged in 17 different requests to Colorado libraries, a 240% increase over the five titles challenged in five attempts recorded in 2018.
In June, Governor Jared Polis signed a new law requiring the state’s public libraries to establish written policies for acquiring, retaining, displaying and using library resources — and governing how to handle any requests to remove books or other resources.
Public libraries must follow standards specified in the bill, including that they can’t exclude books and other resources because of the ethnic background or gender identity of anyone associated with the material.
School libraries are not considered public libraries, so the law does not apply.
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