Joe.My.God. LGBT News
West Palm Beach’s NBC affiliate reports:
A new list shows dozens and dozens of books have been removed from library shelves in the Martin County School District. This comes as the state puts in new requirements for school librarians to review reading material, and districts must have a process allowing community members to challenge books.
Books by well known authors like James Patterson, Toni Morrison, and Jodi Picoult are now off the shelves in Martin County schools.
“99% of the books we have filed challenges on are highly sexually explicit books,” said Julie Marshall, who leads Moms For Liberty in Martin County and filed many of the objections. Jennifer Pippin, a fellow Moms For Liberty activist in Indian River County, said they share lists and work together.
The Washington Post reports:
The removal list includes Picoult’s novel “The Storyteller” about the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor who meets an elderly former SS officer. It contains some violent scenes told in flashbacks from World War II and an assisted suicide.
“Banning ‘The Storyteller’ is shocking, as it is about the Holocaust and has never been banned before,” Picoult told us in an email.
“Martin County is the first to ban twenty of my books at once,” Picoult said, slamming such bans as “a shocking breach of freedom of speech and freedom of information.” Picoult said she’s puzzled by the ban, because she does not “write adult romance,” as objections filed against her books claimed.
Insane: Under Ron DeSantis’s book crackdown, 20 books by Jodi Picoult just got banned at one county’s schools.
One of them is “The Storyteller,” about the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor.
“Banning ‘The Storyteller’ is shocking,” Picoult tells us:https://t.co/y0tKdxz6Ws
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) March 10, 2023
Virtually all the objections that resulted in dozens of books getting removed were filed by one person, according to documents supplied to @FLFreedomRead and to us.
She heads the local Moms for Liberty chapter.
Here’s how this process really works:https://t.co/y0tKdxz6Ws pic.twitter.com/r24ekN36lg
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) March 10, 2023