Book Banning Part II: The Current State of Banned Books

JASON PINSHOWER:

We had groups that were circulating information on social media about going to a library and not just our library specifically, and checking out all lgbtq plus books.

Bethanne Patrick: That’s Jason Pinshower, who works at the public library in Barrington Illinois.

JASON PINSHOWER:

I am the executive director of the Barrington Area Library. I've been here about five years, but been working in libraries for nearly 20 years now. I've done almost everything that one can do in a library. And truly libraries have been a space for me to explore and engage and communicate with people.

Bethanne Patrick: But over the past year, that communication has become hostile. 

JASON PINSHOWER: 

We had folks calling, asking questions. I took a call from a customer who  wanted to know, you know, what, what our policy was on pornography and if we had pornography.

Bethanne Patrick: Obviously, public libraries don’t carry material deemed pornographic. In the last episode we covered the long history of obscenity laws and how they’ve been used to outlaw materials a typically conservative community may object to. Today, we are seeing a push to label more materials as porn. 

JASON PINSHOWER: My response to that was,  you know, we have certainly have items in our collection that have graphic content, but they have literary merit and they've been vetted by all by all, you know, the journals that we follow and things.

Bethanne Patrick: In order for this to happen at a public library there’d likely be a review board, maybe even court cases. But rather than engaging with those boring and bureaucratic steps, citizens at Jason’s library took matters into their own hands. 

JASON PINSHOWER: We had an instance where somebody did check out a bunch of lgbtq plus books and say to a staff member, you know, this stuff shouldn't be on your shelves. This stuff is disgusting. We're not returning it. And then they left.

Books are mirrors into people's experiences. And when you take away the mirror, you basically silence them, right? And so young people don't have the ability to see themselves in something, and if they can see themselves in a piece of literature, that could work wonders for them into adulthood and into the future for their entire lives.

Bethanne Patrick: Welcome back to Missing Pages. I’m your host, writer and literary critic, Bethanne Patrick. This is the podcast where we examine some of the most surprising, industry-shaking controversies in the literary world and try to make sense of them.

Today is our second episode in our two-parter about book bans. Last week we put our current culture war into a larger context and learned that book ban fights like the one we are living through now, have happened before. At times they’ve been worse… they’ve become bloody. But that doesn’t mean what’s happening all over America today isn’t serious. Librarians, teachers, authors, parents and especially students are suffering. What is it like for the people directly impacted? How are they fighting back? That’s this episode of Missing Pages. 

Chapter One: Gender Fear

ANDREA:

My name is Andrea. I have  two kids that live in Lake Barrington with us. We moved here in 2012.

Bethanne Patrick: When you read the headlines it can seem like there’s nothing but vitriol and bad faith actors in this conversation. But what’s appropriate for children and at what age is complicated. We want to start with a story that can represent the sort of reasonable discussions parents sometimes have with their school board regarding what’s on the book list. 

In 2022, a middle school teacher in Barrington, Illinois sent an email out to parents, offering several recommended summer reading lists for children. One of those lists was the Lincoln Award List, which is compiled every year using student votes.

When the middle school teacher included the list in an email, they specified that some of the books on the Lincoln Award List contain mature content that is not appropriate for younger grades.

One of those books with mature content that has gotten a lot of attention in Barrington and nationally, is Gender Queer.

ANDREA:

So my daughter now in fifth grade just went through the first of, I believe it's two of their sex ed courses. So they go into reproduction and how a baby's made and why this is happening to your body and the changes you might see. So they get a brief intro to it. But to go from that to fetish sex is such a huge leap. I mean, my kids still believe in Santa. They're still children.

Bethanne Patrick: Genderqueer is a graphic novel memoir, written by Maia Kobabe (MAI-uh Koh-BAYB). It details the coming of age experience of a non-binary teenager, grappling with sexuality while undergoing the changes that come with puberty. 

ANDREA:

I'm not worried about them realizing how a family is made or where babies come from. Fetish stuff can come later.

Bethanne Patrick: In “Genderqueer,” vibrators, harnesses, and dildos are referenced throughout. Items that could lead to conversations Andrea (Ann-dree ah) doesn’t think her kids are ready for. 

ANDREA: I feel that children because they don't know what to do with it now they think that's their first exposure and now they feel is this normal? And because it's coming from a place of a school that almost gives the, you know, “this is right” and “this is the way it's supposed to be.” When the images are that graphic and you take it into incest, I have to draw the line. It's just, maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but, and they're my kids.

Bethanne Patrick: ..there’s a line in the novel where the main character fantasizes about a romantic connection between two brothers in the show Supernatural. And one image depicts oral sex between two college students.

Suffice to say, Gender Queer sparked a fierce debate among parents at the school. Many parents of sixth graders found it inappropriate. 

Barrington 220 Board of Education Meeting:

My opposition to these books has nothing to do with their LGBTQ content but of their pornographic nature. They discuss in detail how two men can pleasure each other, how to give a proper hand job and a comic book cartoon demonstrating masturbation and oral sex between men…I would be just as upset if these pornographic books had heterosexual content as well.

Bethanne Patrick: Andrea felt similarly.

ANDREA:

My kids have met my gay friends. They've met their children. It's not about that. And I've taught them compassion as much as I could. And that love is love. That doesn't mean they need to know what they do in the bedroom.

Bethanne Patrick: So if you have kids who just learned where babies come from, who still believe in Santa I can understand the objection. I can understand parent’s saying this book shouldn’t be on a list for their middle schooler.

 But what age is the right age? 11, no. 12, probably not, 13 or 14? 15? Maybe based off the description above you don’t think Gender Queer is appropriate for anyone under 18. I mean pictures of oral sex, sex toys, why does a high schooler need a book like that in their library? 

The point here is that there is no right answer, and parents are all going to have their own unique take on how this idea should be applied to their children. Well, here’s what the author, Maia Kobabe says.

MAIA KOBABE for PEN AMERICA:

“I don’t think my book is for everyone. But for the people who need it, it could be a lifeline.”

Bethanne Patrick: The book describes Kobabe’s particularly difficult journey of discovery. 

MAIA KOBABE for PEN AMERICA:

“I have come to have many identities throughout my life. I identify as queer and bi and non-binary and as being on the Ace and Aro spectrum, and this book is partly about trying to figure out where does my gender identity intersect with my sexuality. And it’s a tricky question.

Bethanne Patrick: The oral sex scene, it’s about disappointment. The text in that scene says, “but I can’t feel anything. This was much hotter when it was only in my imagination.”

So imagine if you were a kid who wasn’t relating to your gender or sexuality like nearly every other kid around you. Imagine what reading Kobabe’s story would be like? There’d be evidence that you’re not alone, that life will get less confusing and lonely someday. 

But, I totally get where Andrea and other parents were coming from. For Andrea it’s not about shielding her kids from topics but rather about how it’s presented to them. 

ANDREA:

Parts of history are ugly and parts of history are mean. Are we going to show kids, the people getting decapitated by terrorists? Or do we tell them about it and there's a reason the news doesn't even show the stuff to adults watching it. It's a bit much. Can we find it if we want to? Yeah, but there's reasons that there are filters.

Bethanne Patrick: Kobabe never suggested the book should be on a reading list for middle schoolers, e recommended the book for high school and up. But I also understand if some parents of a middle schooler who was struggling with their identity wanted their kid to have as many lifelines as possible. 

So, of course, there are cases where it’s complicated, where there’s reasonable people on all sides and a compromise can be found. For instance, stock Gender Queer only in the high school library. And if a parent thinks it’s a good book for their middle schooler, let them get it from the library or buy it… ideally at a local store. 

But of course most efforts to ban books aren’t looking for compromises. 

Barrington 220 Board of Education Meeting:

We’re not gonna teach our kids to say that’s okay and confuse ‘em. They’re already confused in life. It’s just super simple. It’s like two plus two. Man and woman produces kids. We don’t need to teach my kid how to hold his penis. Or it’s okay with another man or two women. Everybody’s laughing ‘cause it’s DISGUSTING.

Bethanne Patrick: After the break we talk with a parent fighting tooth and nail from bans she views as draconian. 

Laney Hawes: So the Bible and the Diary of Anne Frank were pulled from shelves the day before school started.

Chapter Two: Keyword: Corruption 

Laney Hawes: Yeah, so my name is Lainey Hawes and um, I live in Fort Worth, Texas, and I'm a mom to four public school children here in Texas.

Bethanne Patrick: Laney's family moved from Buffalo a couple of years ago and she and her husband specifically chose the area because of the schools. 

Laney Hawes: I have children at every grade level. We have been so happy with the teachers who put their heart and souls into teaching and providing, you know, knowledge to our children and preparing them to go out into the world. Are they perfect? No, but they're pretty darn close, right? And then we slowly watched public education and books become the new political talking point. It decided to become this boogeyman right of some sort - where all of a sudden it was getting people really really riled up.

Bethanne Patrick: Laney first had book bans come on her radar in the Virginia Governor's race, it seemed to her like it was an issue that helped Republican Glenn Youngkin win a 2021  Governors race. Then it came closer to home.

Laney Hawes: we got an email from the school district that told us that the district was going to start pulling access for our children for a bunch of online library apps and a bunch of other  apps that they've been using in classrooms with access to books and stories and videos and movies,  um, because they were concerned about the content in them.

And I was like, oh, oh, okay, well that, that like actually seems legitimate. Um, but then I had an English teacher friend of mine reach out to me and say, hey Lainey

It's really concerning that they're pulling access to things like something called Newzella, Sora, there are a bunch of different apps.

And she said, I'm really concerned. And I said, okay, well, I am, I am too. 

Bethanne Patrick: Laney was the type of parent the teachers turned to.

Laney Hawes: As a teacher she wasn't comfortable pushing back because she didn't want it  To hurt her career, right?Like teachers are already learning that if they push back, they're getting targeted, um, they're getting in trouble. 

Bethanne Patrick: So she called the associate superintendent to figure out why they were pulling these apps. 

Laney Hawes: And she said, well, you know some of these apps that our students are using, we realized don't have age range.  Limits, right? So some of our kids are getting access to kindergarten through high school and we want to make sure that first and second graders don't have access to maybe some of them and I said, oh, oh, well, that makes sense.

That makes perfect sense to me. I agree with that. You know, I don't need my, my kindergartner at the time to have access to maybe like a sex ed class at a high school or might have, And I said, well, that I feel great about that. Thank you so much. We'll stay in touch.  Um, and then it just started to snowball from there. 

Bethanne Patrick: In the fall of 2021 year Laney’s State Rep Matt Kraus released a list of around 850 books that quote "might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex."

Bethanne Patrick: You might be thinking, “nearly 1000 books, how does someone even make that list?” Well, Deborah Caldwell, director of the American Library Association office for intellectual freedom, thinks they just searched keywords. It’s not like he was a  voracious reader and personally found these books inappropriate after a thorough reading. Anyways, regardless of how it was made the list has spread far and wide. But Laney’s town was special. 

Laney Hawes: And he sent it to all of these school districts all over Texas, and he said, I just want to know if these books are in your schools. A lot of people don't realize it's actually the epicenter is North Texas

Bethanne Patrick; What stuff is included in "these books," 

Laney Hawes:: Anti American sentiment, books that were making kids feel bad about being white, or bad about being American, and then sexually explicit content.

And then before we knew it, we had people showing up at our school board meetings with these books in hand about books they found on our children's school libraries.

Bethanne Patrick: One book in particular was shouted about.

Laney Hawes: It all started actually with Gender Queer. And we know why they chose that book because that book is when, when you look at images from that book out of context, they can be very shocking. And I will admit that I don't believe any... Any elementary schooler should have access to a book like that, right? This isn't a children's, a children's book,

Bethanne Patrick: As you heard above, the author agrees and at least in Laney’s school district this wasn’t a problem.

Laney Hawes: Our librarians would never put a young adult title in an elementary school. Right? Like this book is coded as a young adult. It's not in elementary schools.  So that wasn't in elementary schools. It wasn't. It simply was not there.

Bethanne Patrick: Regardless, parents started speaking out during PTA meetings saying they want books removed. Which was something the school district actually had a policy for, though it hadn't ever been enacted before.

Laney Hawes: In the history of our school district, no book had ever been officially challenged through this process. And within a matter of months, we had 41 separate books that had been challenged that had come from Krause's list, but also from a few other lists, right? Um, they were using all sorts of websites. 

And groups like Moms for Liberty, they were getting access to, they were, they were ultimately getting lists of books and then go scouring our catalog for them. So these weren't books that a child got and brought home and was concerned by. It was literally, let's go see if this book exists  somewhere on a shelf and then let’s throw a fit about it.

Bethanne Patrick: So the district enacted this previously hypothetical process. 

Laney Hawes: when you have a problem with a book, and, and you don't believe it should be, able to be accessed by any student, not just yours, because if you don't want your kid to have a book, there was a policy in place.

You call the district, you call your librarian, you make sure your child's account says they cannot access this book or these types of book, you know, you could do that for your child. That was always an option in our school district. But if you weren't happy with that and you wanted to take it a step further and say, I don't want any kids To have access to these books, you could challenge it.

The district says, Hey, we need to, we have these book challenge committees and we need to fill them.So this book challenge committee was a different, for every single book was a different group of people. Every single challenge committee was composed of  community members and parents. staff and administration and some librarians.

Bethanne Patrick:  7-10 people need to get together, read one of the books being challenged and discuss whether it should be pulled. They needed to do that for all 41 books, well- a little less. turns out some of the books flagged weren't even in the libraries. Regardless, it's a lot of people so they made a google form and any tax payer in the area could sign up. Naturally, Laney signed up and was on a committee for two books.

Laney Hawes: I was chosen for two books. One of them was The Diary of Anne Frank, the graphic novel adaptation. And the other one I think was called One Fine Summer. It was a graphic novel, um, about a young girl. Right. Uh, who goes to a lake house for the summer and some of her experiences there.

Bethanne Patrick: At the end the committee would vote if a book belonged in a school library. The committee could outright ban a book or they could decide to only have it in the libraries for the age range it was appropriate for. For example, a book could be deemed appropriate in the middle school and high school libraries or just the high school library. And while a book was essentially on trial, the decision didn’t need to be unanimous, it was majority rule. The committee was instructed to focus on two factors: One: Is the book pervasively vulgar: yes or no, Two:  is the book educationally suitable, yes or no.”

Laney Hawes: When we did the Diary of Anne Frank, the graphic novel adaptation, when we all got in that room, all of us were just shocked that the book had been challenged. The person who challenged the book is welcome to attend and be a member of the committee.

For the Diary of Anne Frank, the person who challenged it didn't show up. So we all kind of sat there and were like, What in the world? It was a really quick committee meeting. We all discussed how beautiful the book was. We actually discussed what maybe someone could have had a problem with. 

Bethanne Patrick: The version most people are familiar with is actually abridged and in this version Anne Frank acknowledges that she's going through puberty.

Laney Hawes: There was one point where she talks about her changing body, right? And she actually talks about her own, like, Like, I don't know what I look like between my legs, and she talks about feeling and what it felt like. Not prurient, not overtly sexual. In fact, concerning if someone found that overtly sexual, because then you're wondering what's wrong with them, right? Uh, and she's clearly an adolescent young girl. who's stuck in captivity, hiding from people who want to murder her, while also experiencing puberty and adolescence.

Bethanne Patrick: They reinstated the book. And they did the same for the other graphic novel, though they decided it wasn’t appropriate at the elementary school level. As for the other books the other committees were looking into?

Laney Hawes: all of the books that went to committee were voted to go back on library shelves. Every single committee. Now some of them, there were even a few I think that voted to only go in high schools. I think there was even one that voted to only have it accessible with parent permission.

All of those committees, every single one said, we want this book. back on library shelves in some form or another and at some level.

Bethanne Patrick: There you have it! A community comes together, does research and forms a consensus position through democracy... If only we could end the story there. 

Laney Hawes: they didn't trust the results because, you know, these librarians who want nothing more than to groom children for whatever, had said, ultimately stacked these committees with woke liberals. They felt like it was unfair and had been ultimately sabotaged. and so that's ultimately what they used to run.

Bethanne Patrick: The books were reinstated but in May the district held elections for seats on their school board. And these committees to keep these books on the shelves became a rallying cry.

Laney Hawes: At first we really did believe that this might be organic, right? This might be true grassroots. No, it wasn't.

Bethanne Patrick: As in the people complaining that the books should be banned were local and came together on their own naturally.

Laney Hawes: It was what we call astroturf. Fake grassroots. Turns out...  It was well coordinated and well funded, right,  which vary within the next few months after we saw the 41 books get challenged, um, and then we saw hundreds of thousands of dollars pour into our school board races.

Bethanne Patrick: Seats on a school board... It's not the kind of election most people are engaged with or the kind that normally raises big money but this time was different. Cash flooded in. 

Laney Hawes: specifically Patriot Mobile, which is a Christian wireless cell phone provider that has a side pack, um, Again, we didn't know, had coordinated, and was spending half a million dollars to overtake four school boards in my community. 

Bethanne Patrick: Laney might sound a little conspiratorial here but actually- who was funding these races was out in the open.

Laney Hawes: We all started getting for this group of people that said paid for by the Patriot Mobile Action PAC. And we were like, who, who, who's that?  And then we're looking it up. They're not in our community. And then people were posting it online and then we were like, wait, the exact same flyer is in Southlake for their school board, but the pictures have been removed and it's their candidates. And the exact same flyer is in Grapevine, Texas, and the names have, the pictures are just their candidates. Oh wait, the exact same flyer is in Mansfield ISD. And so we all started finding each other online, and then we realized, oh my gosh,  this is coordinated.

Bethanne Patrick: All that money in a race with extremely low turnout, it went far. That first year the patriot mobile candidates won three seats.

Laney Hawes: We started finding pictures of them all together, even on election night. They had these giant celebrations where Patriot Mobile's executive team traveled to each, like election night celebration to take pictures with all of the candidates that they had paid to, you know, that they had funded their campaigns.

So yeah, we have pictures of all of our candidates here celebrating with all the Patriot Mobile executives. You know, thank you so much for what you've done. Thank you so much for saving our schools from, you know, pornography in our libraries. And unfortunately. That messaging was very, very effective with a very small portion of people that showed up to vote 

Bethanne Patrick:  Laney and those who shared her beliefs couldn't compete with the money backing Patriot Mobile. And when the new regime came into power the repercussions were immediate.

Laney Hawes: And the day before school started in that August of 2022, an email went out to every district librarian and every teacher in the district and all the principals and said, here's a list of 41 books that were. voted many of them to go back on library shelves, we're asking you to now take them off of library shelves again.

Bethanne Patrick: And the new board established a new policy for how to deal with books they took issue with. 

Laney Hawes: Our school board that fall quickly passed a rubric. They call it their content guidelines rubric. I call it the book banning rubric.

Bethanne Patrick: The rubric now includes things to consider like “tobacco use by a minor, horror, sexual activities, discussions or depictions of gender fluidity.” Then depending on grade level a certain amount of those things is permissible. Except when it comes to three of the criteria, for 3 points on the rubric any amount of these features would lead to a book being removed. 1. detailed descriptions of sex acts, 2. sexual activities- not quite sure how 1 and 2 are different but regardless…  And 3. any discussion or depictions of gender fluidity. So any sex scene, any character using they/them pronouns and the book is to be pulled. Even on the shelves of the high school library.

Laney Hawes: And they no longer look at a book based on. You know, a whole.

They look at a book according to a set of, you know, a rubric, a set of guidelines, and if it has any certain thing in it, no matter what context that is in, no matter if it's, you know, one teeny section of a 400 page book, that book is then  banned from our school district. It got worse and worse and worse from there when all of those books were pulled.

Bethanne Patrick: Once a book is pulled according to the new policy it can't be reconsidered for a decade. But Laney was able to save two books. 

Laney Hawes: the Diary of Anne Frank was on that list again, the graphic novel adaptation, as was the Bible. So the Bible and the Diary of Anne Frank were pulled from shelves the day before school started, along with a huge list of other books,  which started a giant uproar in the community.

Bethanne Patrick: When Laney saw that those books were on the list, she did what was in her power. She tweeted. 

Laney Hawes: And I said, the Bible and the Diary of Anne Frank were just pulled off of library shelves in Keller SD today. And I tweeted that, and that tweet went semi viral. And that's kind of when it started, right? Some interviews, some conversations. 

Bethanne Patrick: The bible, the diary of Anne Frank, they went back on the shelves. But what’s that expression about a good deed?

Laney Hawes: And that's also when I became the, like, public figure for the people who wanted to ban books to also hate, right?

That I became, I became the person that they could all say, here's this mom of four kids and she's trying to push pornography on her children. Like the number of times they're calling me a groomer. They want to say, you know, like pedophilia. It's, it's It's trash. I have four children. I have a teenage son.

He's like, Mom, I don't think these people know you. Like they say you want to give pornography to kids. And my son's like, do they want to talk to me and like, look at my phone about, you know what I mean? Like, like we  don't even know. I don't want children to have pornography. Like absolutely not. That's like clear as day.

I have four children. I don't want them exposed to pornography. Um, but it just, it all ramped up.  

Bethanne Patrick: In the next election big money poured in again. Now 6 out of 7 of the board are Patriot Mobile backed. But Laney has kept up the fight. 

Laney Hawes: So as a group of us parents started a non-profit here to support public education, to fight against book bans, and to also work really hard at educating the community on school board elections and things like that. When we started the non profit, we filed with the state of Texas, obviously, and we don't have a lot of money. So when we went to start this organization,  we had to come up with an address and we talked about getting a PO box and we, you know, but we didn't, we don't have, we don't have a lot of money. So I was like, let's just put the address at my house. I don't, I don't care.

Bethanne Patrick: Laney's address was publically available. You can guess where this is going, and your guess will be right. 

Laney Hawes: the first thing we did was for National School Counselor's Day. We bought 5 gift cards to Sonic for all the school counselors in our school district, and we made a post about it and we shared and said, Hey, we support public education.

Thank you so much to our school counselors. and when we posted that. Tthe political strategist that's paid a whole lot of money by the local Republican Party and Patriot Mobile and a lot of candidates in the area decided to go look up our, you know, the organization, saw that it was in my address, posted the link to the deed to my home, my full legal name, my husband's full legal name, on Twitter saying that I was an Antifa anti family Satanist who was trying to destroy the community.

And he tweeted that. And then a sitting state legislator retweeted it and it just got a little bit dicey. In fact, one woman in the community who really dislikes me. Her profile picture is her holding an AR 15. And posted on Facebook that she knew the layout to my home. I filed a police report for harassment, and the police just did just basic patrols around my home for a few weeks. 

Bethanne Patrick: Attorneys told Laney to take down anything outside her home that indicated she had kids.

Laney Hawes: Like our elementary schools have these signs that your kids get for awards. You know, like my child is a, you know, a character, whatever. We took all those things down for a few weeks. So yeah, things like that. A Facebook page harassing me has been created. They make memes, they make videos. Uh, yeah, there's a lot. Luckily I have a really great support system and really, really thick skin.

Bethanne Patrick: Multiple times Laney had to change all her passwords because people were trying to get into her accounts. 

Laney Hawes: I had to do that a few times. It turns out that when you decide to stand up for something like this and it's well coordinated. There's a whole group of people who are concerned, right, of what you're doing. They, they think I'm connected to Antifa, which is hysterical and wild.

I  don't know who Antifa is, right, like I don't have any specific contacts. So there's that. A lot of them are convinced that I'm being funded. By some political movement like the Soros or Hillary Clinton I've been accused of. I have none of that. In fact, at this point, I've been accused of it so much, I say, if somebody wants to send us money, we will take it.

Bethanne Patrick: They need money to spread their message, to try to compete with ambitious politicians and well funded campaigns. And while Laney doesn’t have that, or George Soros funding, author’s with platforms are speaking out. Including the one time author of Wonder Woman, an author with 40 million copies of her books in print and 6 tv adaptations in her credits. That’s next. 

Chapter Three: Books Can Save Lives

Jodi Picoult:

Not only have my books been banned in multiple states and multiple titles of mine banned, for example, last week I heard about a school in Minnesota where for years the book was taught as, part of one English teacher's curriculum. And it was taught without incident. And this year, the seniors in the school took all the copies of the book and threw them in a dumpster because they said it made them feel guilty and they didn't feel that that should be part of their education.

Bethanne Patrick: That’s Jodi Picoult, author of 31 books and counting, perennial best seller, and apparently a threat to a Minnesota based senior class’s psyche. And it seems that Picoult is not just a danger in the midwest.

Good Morning America: 

America's culture war is being fought in the classroom and now there is a battle waging over banned books yeah last year Florida passed a new law to review reading materials made available in classrooms and this month Marin County Florida announced the removal of 92 books from its schools 20 of those books were written by best-selling author Jodi Picoult.

 Bethanne Patrick: Florida is currently one of the most active states with book ban legislation going into effect. And Jodi Picoult is an author whose books have been affected by that.

One of them was “19 Minutes.”

Jodi Picoult:

19 Minutes, I wrote years ago, it is about a school shooting, and it is in particular about the effects of bullying and how it takes a village, not only to raise a child, but also to fail a child.

Bethanne Patrick: According to Picoult it’s been banned in school districts across 24 states.

Jodi Picoult:

One single page that describes a date rape and uses the anatomically correct words for genitals…Now it's not, again, gratuitous. It's part of the plot, which is all the different ways the people are bullied.

Bethanne Patrick: I’m thinking of the criteria in Laney’s school district. That instance of rape would fall under sexual content but it’s a great example of what I see as the issue with the policy. The book provides an opportunity to talk about consent and the ramifications of abuse but when the book is pulled, students, parents, teachers, all lose an entry point into a conversation that should help young people prepare themselves for the world. Or as Picoult puts it.

Jodi Picoult: You can childproof your world, but you can't world proof your child.

Bethanne Patrick: According to Picoult, she’s seen the direct impacts her books can have on preparing young people for our complicated world. In fact, she says her work has been an intervention when it comes to some of the most complicated and tragic aspects of modern America. 

Jodi Picoult:

When I was on tour for this book and I went to tons of high schools and I was in one in New Hampshire, and they had decided, again, talking about the way the world has changed. It was one book, one school read. So thousands of kids all read “19 Minutes.” And so I gave my talk and then I stood up and the principal's on stage with me and he says, “Anyone have a question?” This one kid raises his hand, he stands up and he goes, well, I don't really have a question, but, I just wanted to tell you that I was gonna bring a gun into school this October and kill people. And then I read this book cuz it was assigned to me. And I realized I'm not the only person who feels this way. So the principal standing next to me and is white as a sheet, right? And you know, another kid raises their hand and I call on, on her. It's a little girl who is in a wheelchair. And she says, um, I don't really have a question either, but, I go through my life in the school with everyone not seeing me. Nobody notices me, and I was suicidal. And I came home and I was crying and my mom was upset and she was trying to, to make me feel better. And I just kept saying, I, I want to kill myself. And then I actually read my English homework, which was the first chapter of 19 minutes, and that's the reason I'm still alive

Bethanne Patrick: Listener, have you felt like a book saved your life? Maybe that’s too dramatic. How about, has a book made you feel seen or helped you understand yourself when everything just seemed so bad?

Or has a book made a group of people whose circumstances are tougher than your own, more real, more three dimensional to you? Have you read something about people very different from you and experienced a profound sense of empathy?

I bet the answer for most of you is yes to all the above. I know that’s true for me. So, what are you, what are any of us to do?

Here’s Laney one last time. 

Laney Hawes: I talk to people about how to save this, how to combat book banning, where I said vote in local elections. I had one guy on Twitter who lived in Connecticut. Comment in one of my feeds that was like, how do you keep letting, how do you guys let, keep letting this happen?  And I commented to him and I said, did sir. Did you vote in your last school board election? And he was like, well no, but I live in Connecticut and I don't have kids so I don't have to, I don't have to worry about it. And I was like, well, that's how it happened. Is people all over my community who don't think they have to worry about it because I have this amazing school district with high quality schools and whatever, they don't have to worry about it because we got great schools.

They're just not keying in to what's actually happening. So vote in school board elections if you want to save books in public schools. That's, that's the real answer. Or run, run for, run for school board.  So yeah.  That's the answer. 

Bethanne Patrick:

Next week, tune in to hear the full interview with bestselling author Jodi Picoult.

Missing Pages is a Podglomerate Original, Produced, mixed, and mastered by Chris Boniello with additional production and editing by Jordan Aaron.

This episode was produced by Claire McInerny.

This episode was written by Lauren Delisle.

Additional production and writing by Grant Irving.

Fact checking by Douglas Weissman

Marketing by Joni Deutsch, Madison Richards, Morgan Swift, Vannessa Ullman, and Annabella Pena. 

Art by Tom Grillo. 

Produced and Hosted by me, Bethanne Patrick. 

Original music composed and performed by Hashem Assadullahi, additional music provided by Epidemic Sound. 

Executive Produced by Jeff Umbro and the Podglomerate.

Special thanks to Dan Christo, Matt Keeley, Jodi Picoult, Jacqui Higgins-Dailey, Andrea from Barrington Illinois, Jason Pinshower, Laney Hawes, Deborah Caldwell-Stone, Len Niehoff, Amanda Jones and Alexandra Stevenson.

You can learn more about Missing Pages at the podglomerate dot com, on twitter at miss pages pod and on Instagram at missing pages pod, or you can email us at missing pages at the podglomerate dot com. If you liked what you heard today, please let your friends and family know and suggest an episode for them to listen to.