Banned Books List Continues to Grow

Schools are getting more and more books pulled off the shelves every year due to the concerns of parents and guardians. The books that are pulled usually contain themes or concepts that are believed to be too explicit for students to be read. When a book becomes a concern, a parent or guardian can challenge the book.  Essentially a person or group of people are trying to remove or restrict access to a book because they disagree with the book’s ideas and or themes. In MCPS specifically, for a book to get officially banned the School Board of Education must sign off on its banning. 

However, schools in Maryland that are in Carroll County have a different type of process. The policy there is that if a book is challenged by a parent or guardian it is taken off the shelf immediately. The process starts there and the book is looked over by the School Board of Education. Only after the process is completed, the book is able to be put back if the ban is not signed off on.

Around 50 library books were pulled off the shelves in Carroll County because of people challenging books they felt weren’t appropriate. Since books get pulled off the shelves immediately in Carroll County, it is often overwhelming for librarians to keep up with all of them. 

Ms. Julie Simon, the Media Specialist at Springbrook High School, shares how the process of challenging a book starts. At the school level, parents and guardians can challenge a book if they believe that a certain piece is harmful to their child’s learning or inappropriate for their education. Of course, textbooks are required for rigorous courses such as AP and IB classes which make it harder for people to challenge since the curriculum is set by a bigger, international standard. However, books for English class are easier to challenge since the curriculum is set by the state/county and are sometimes chosen on a class-by-class basis. 

Ms. Simon has dealt with parents or guardians trying to challenge books their students were reading. She states how two books, “This Book is Gay” and “Gender Queer” were two books that were questioned by parents of Springbrook students.

If a parent or guardian of a student at Springbrook feels like a book is inappropriate and decides to challenge it, they are invited to have a conversation with our Media Specialist. The conversation would allow them to voice their concerns and give our Media Specialist an opportunity to have an open discussion with them. If the parent or guardian still feels uncomfortable with the book and continues to challenge it, then our principal, Ms. Valentine, would be included in the process. Once the previous steps are followed and there is no resolution, the challenge of the book would be sent to the counties Board of Education to be reviewed and signed off on if all is in agreement. 

The library is open for all students here at Springbrook. Ms. Simon touches on how the broad windows welcome every student into the library and hopes that everyone can see themselves in a positive light through the books at the Brook. She states how reading is optional and no one is forced to read anything from the library, so books shouldn’t really be challenged since it is the freedom of the student to choose what to read. Ms. Simon, along with the rest of us, hope for a future where books aren’t taken off shelves because a certain group doesn’t agree with an ideology, and where every student can indulge any story they want.

To find out more information about Banned Books, visit https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks