Oh boy. You know some local right-wingers are getting their jollies off this story.
Apparently, someone donated a bunch of books to a school in Sartell, MN, and some ‘helpful’ local mom started going through them. She found a juicy one: an adult MM romance novel that contained explicit sex scenes. If I’d been that parent, I’d have just told the teacher/librarian, and given the rather strong descriptions in the book, authorities would no doubt have immediately agreed and swept it out of the general circulation, quietly.
But no! That’s not what this parent did! Instead, she made a big show of it, appearing at a school board meeting, and reading out loud the racy parts. It wasn’t about simply removing a book with inappropriate content, but about grandstanding.
I didn’t find it that disturbing, but agree that it didn’t provide much in the way of educational content, and should be removed from the school’s collection.
Now, of course, all the kids know about the book, and this was even news on Pornhub as well as Newsweek. I think the novel Him, by Bowen and Kennedy, might get a little surge in sales from all the free advertising. Good work, Kids Over Politics 748! You discovered that porn exists! Now start going over all the sites accessible over the internet to see if there’s anything problematic there.
It’s an old story. The censor, and only the censor must read all the smut.
Fundamentalists always have the best porn collections.
For “research,” of course.
I have a few suggestions for what to google to get the search process started.
Did this parent have a stake in promoting this book?
I can’t tell you what porn is, but I know it when I read it out loud to a group of parents, teachers, and students at my school meeting.
“I didn’t find it that disturbing, but agree that it didn’t provide much in the way of educational content, and should be removed from the school’s collection.”
The book has an average reader rating of 4.7 out of 5 on Barnes and Noble’s site, and its characters are 18, just a couple of years older than high school juniors and seniors. As for educational content, what does Tom Sawyer teach you, besides how to con people? What does Treasure Island teach, beware of amputees?
I think most school librarians would agree that their collections should include books that are enjoyable and not particularly pedagogical. My school library, shared by both the high school and the middle school, even had Cosmopolitan magazine.
@moarscienceplz #6,
The fact that the characters are 18 yo men does not necessarily reflect the age—nor the gender—of the target audience.
I wouldn’t consider your typical adult romance appropriate material for a high school library, but shrug is it really that big of a deal? I suspect the number of kids combing the library for this stuff must be negligible compared to those who are aware of AO3.
If I had kids in school, I’d have no problem with them reading the book. I also think it’s reasonable to keep library content somewhat focused on topics they’ll need for schoolwork. It may be an excellent, well-reviewed book with high literary value, but the question is whether it serves the needs of teachers and students.
Like Siggy, I’d shrug at its inclusion. It’s useful to have kids learn about the gay experience, but is this particular novel the best way? Do any of the teachers have pedagogical plans to incorporate it? Is it part of a greater plan to represent a wide range of sexual awareness in the curriculum? Is it a hefty hardbound edition that can be used to whack prudish parents across the head with? You know we don’t just pick random texts for students, we actually have to have some intent.
Children would not understand what they are reading in these “romance” novels unless their pornogram is suitably developed.
“I wouldn’t consider your typical adult romance appropriate material for a high school library”
No? I think in all I would. A school library like a public school library should have material simply for reading pleasure and many high school students like adult romance novels. Meh, though. Can’t see I’d care that much either way.
It’s like the joke about the woman who complains to the police about the man who keeps going by her house whistling dirty songs.
Clearly, children shouldn’t learn about sex from this kind of book but rather the hard core rape porn they find on the internet.
The fact it’s a same-sex romance novel is all one needs to know. They’re not concerned about the sexual content, they’re bigoted against the gays.
I would never have been able to get a book like this in my school library, even at the age of 18, because I grew up under Section 28 and that meant almost all state schools stripped the tiny offerings of LGBT+ content from their shelves completely.
Admittedly, I’d probably have returned it substantially stickier than I’d found it at that age, so that might be a good thing.
@11. bcw bcw : Not sure I’ve heard that one..
I have heard of theStreisland Effect something this person clearly hasn’t and also, yeah, FFS..
Aren’t levels of pornography apparently also higher in the Bible / Rust belt areas of the US of A? I seem to recall reading that somewhere..
I wonder if the library has copies of the ‘Flowers in the Attic’ series, which features multi-generational incest, and matter of fact torture of children by their wealthy religious zealot grandmother. Capitalist Christian Porn?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_in_the_Attic
Interview with a Vampire is a highly sexual story about Gay Vampires, though the film version with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt rather elided the hot and sexy toxic romance aspect of the books by Anne Rice.
I got both books from public libraries, but I’m sure plenty of those who want to ban books would have no problem with incest/torture/etc since it’s heterosexual white Xtians porn.
What I’m getting out of this story is that we need dedicated personnel to manage the library, who have been trained in how libraries work, who aren’t just parents who think their desire to “be involved” in the functioning of a library means they are the best people to run a library. Because clearly the person who donated these books crossed a line.
It’s like we need a…oh…what to call them…well, they run the library, so, “librariest”? “Librador”?
Oh, and if you want another story about gay hockey players, check out, Check, Please!
https://www.checkpleasecomic.com/
When I was at grammar school in the 1970s the library would carry Paris-Match, and while it was a serious weekly news magazine some of the lifestyle photography showed a, um, distinct French flair and was extremely popular amongst many of the pupils.
I sometimes think the teachers who ran the library stocked it just to draw kids in, expecting that they would make the effort to read the associated articles in the hope of further titillation and inadvertently improve their French.
I don’t suppose this occurred in a district with “don’t say gay” laws? Asking because this prurient halfwit could be charged…
@StevoR, as I recall, back when satellite dishes were 10 feet across, Playboy was on a high inclination satellite, while the G rated birds flew lower to the horizon. It was a well known phenomenon that someone from the house would be up shortly before dawn cranking the dish back down to a more respectable inclination.
Things haven’t changed much since then, plenty of content now that we’ve got the intertubes.
Interestingly, interracial couples seem to be more common in the US south these days, compared to a generation or two ago, when such things were a stoning offense.
Also, far more common than food stores or churches, shops that sell ethanol beverages.
@12 bcw bcw
Or from their holy bible!
robro at 4 – Good question. I was wondering if there’s perhaps a conspiracy of local conservative activists, slipping queer romance/erotica books into the school library and then “finding” them so they can make hay about it and publicly cast the school as an evil LGBT indoctrination mill.
Over half a century ago when libraries still had card catalogs and microfiche readers I learned from my friends that what you do is hold books hanging by the spine, and they’ll kind of open a little wider at the “good” parts. This worked especially well with paperbacks.
I suppose people looking for the “good” parts tended to also make sure other people would find them.
@lumipuna, no, there’s something national going on.
Too much of precisely the same preaching is going on to be otherwise.
@Helge, that’s ancient news. Books naturally will open to the last area or page opened to or most opened to. Creasing and stresses guarantee it.
The fascist propaganda is coming from multiple right wing media outlets. The radio is filled with them, and they deliberately target rural markets with their rabid fascist agenda.
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/06/1147345914/the-divided-dial-examines-how-right-wing-radio-spreads-misinformation
Judging the book by its cover*, I would expect it to appeal particularly to shoe fetishists.
*What, you’re not supposed to do that?
@25 Tethys : SBS TV in Oz recently had a doco series Radio Hate on that. I dunno if SBS onDemand works for you but its here :
https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-series/radio-hate
There..