A list of some 390 books banned earlier this school year by school officials in one Tennessee county is being used as a “cheat sheet” by other school districts to vet their assessment of which books to ban.
The list originated in Wilson County, which includes the towns of Mt. Juliet and Lebanon in Middle Tennessee, and is being circulated to other school systems in the state studying how to comply with the state’s “age-appropriate” school library law.
Chalkbeat’s Marta Aldrich, who has extensively reported on school book banning in Tennessee, wrote earlier this month that a survey found that 1,100 books have been banned by Tennessee school systems in the first few months of the school year and hundreds more have been banned since.
The escalation in book bans follows an expansion this year of Tennessee’s controversial 2022 Age-Appropriate Materials Act.
Banned in Knox County Schools
In early December, the Knox County Schools announced it is banning 48 books and wants them removed by the time classes resume in January after winter break.
Here are the 48 books banned in Knox County schools:
- Me, Earl & The Dying Girl by Jessee Andrews
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
- Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
- Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony
- 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher
- Girls on the Verge by Sharon Biggs Waller
- There’s Going to Be a Baby by John Burningham
- Draw Me A Star by Eric Carle
- Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
- Just Listen by Sarah Dessen
- A Stolen Life by Jaycee Duggar
- The Carnival of Bray by JessieAnn Foley
- In A Glass Grimmly by Adam Gimwitz
- Lighter Than My Shadow by Katie Green
- Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
- Locke and Key: Alpha and Omega by Joe Hill
- Locke and Key: Clockworks by Joe Hill
- Locke and Key: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill
- Identical by Ellen Hopkins
- Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
- Attack on Titan Vol. 2 by Hajime Isayama
- Grown by Tiffany Jackson
- DUFF by Kody Keplinger
- The Walking Dead: Book Ten by Robert Kirkman
- Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe
- Monstress Vol. 2: the Blood by Marjorie Liu
- Late Night at the Telegraph Club by Malina Lo
- Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas
- Tower of Dawn by Sarah J. Maas
- The Way We Work by David Macaulay
- Wicked by Gregory Maguire
- Sold by Patricia Morrison
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
- Skin by DonnaJo Napoli
- Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez
- Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick
- Beautiful by Amy Reed
- Mrs. Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Graphic Novel by Ransom Riggs
- You: The Owner’s Manual for Teens by Michael Roizen
- I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sanchez
- In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
- A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
- The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater
- Blankets by Craig Thompson
- Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall
- Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
Growing Trend of Book Bans
In July 2023, Tennessee ranked 4th in the number of books banned by school districts.
Nationally, PEN America says it tracked 10,046 instances of book bans during the last school year, nearly four times the number of book bans just two years before. The bans involved over 4,000 titles.
PEN America, a non-profit which has been around since 1922, works to defend free expression.
For a number of authors, their entire catalog is being targeted, according to PEN America.
Role of Moms for Liberty
The conservative group Moms for Liberty spearheads the book ban effort in schools. The organization started in Florida in 2021 protesting COVID-19 restrictions in schools and latched onto education materials and books in schools. The group has spread across the country with local chapters in at least 45 states.
Moms for Liberty has been very active in Tennessee — especially Middle Tennessee — frequenting school board meetings, lobbying for legislation and supporting conservative candidates who support its views. In 2021, in one of its earliest book banning efforts in the state, the group tried to ban a book about Martin Luther King Jr. because teaching the history of civil rights has “traumatized” white children.
The effort, however, to remove supposedly obscene and pornographic books from school libraries caught fire with conservatives and has become a popular cause among a variety of conservative groups and politicians.
“The restrictions on books and access to authors, stories, and information are today having far-reaching implications,” PEN America writes in the report “Banned in the USA: Beyond the Shelves. “In the third year of this worsening book banning crisis, the defense of the core principles of public education and the freedom to read, learn, and think is as necessary now as ever.”
What happens to books banned by school systems in Tennessee? “I don’t have a clue, but I would burn ’em,” one rural East Tennessee legislator said in 2022.
(Image created by Google Gemini.)