A Florida school district banned a book about banned books

Alan Gratz’s “Ban This Book” tells the tale of a fourth-grader’s quest to bring her favorite book back to the school library after officials had it removed.

Late last month, a Florida school district banned “Ban This Book.”

A parent involved in Moms for Liberty, a right-wing parents-rights group, submitted a complaint about the book in February, alleging that it depicted sexual conduct and was “teaching children to be social justice warriors.” Though a school district committee recommended that “Ban This Book” be kept on shelves, the Indian River County school board voted to ban it last month.

On Wednesday, Gratz told The Washington Post that “Ban This Book” and some of his other titles had been challenged in the past, but he couldn’t recall a ban of this scale. He learned about the restriction from an advocacy group, he said. The Tallahassee Democrat reported on the ban this week.

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“The overwhelming irony of banning a book about book banning has been enough to keep people from banning it for a little while,” Gratz, 52, told The Post.

The school board and its five members did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday evening.

Jennifer Pippin, the chair of the Indian River, Fla., chapter of Moms for Liberty who filed the complaint about “Ban This Book,” told The Post in text messages Wednesday that she wanted titles with “sexually explicit content” removed from schools. She said she complained about “Ban This Book” because it referenced other banned books with sexual content. Pippin added that parents could still access the book through public libraries and online bookstores.

Gratz said he wrote the book in 2017 to call attention to challenges against books, an issue he said was “relatively unseen” at the time. He recalled religious objections to the Harry Potter series’ portrayal of witchcraft and challenges to the Junie B. Jones books because their titular 5-year-old character had poor grammar.

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“Ban This Book” was meant to push back on that phenomenon, Gratz said.

“Nobody has the right to tell you what you can and can’t read, except your parents, and they shouldn’t have the ability to tell other parents what books their kids can and can’t read,” he told The Post. “And that’s the core message.”

Books have been swept up in the culture wars in recent years as school officials and lawmakers have tussled over how to teach about race, history and sexuality in classrooms. Last year, 4,240 titles in U.S. schools and libraries were challenged, a 65 percent jump from the previous year, according to the American Library Association. Seventeen states attempted to restrict more than 100 titles each — including Florida, where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation making it easier for residents to challenge books, before limiting who could file challenges in April.

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Pippin’s complaint about “Ban This Book,” which follows a girl as she creates a locker library of banned titles, said the story was “inappropriate for unaccompanied minor children in schools.” In the complaint, Pippin cited pages in the book where the characters mention other materials that reference sex.

The complaint was one of 245 book challenges Pippin has submitted on behalf of the local Moms for Liberty chapter, she wrote to The Post. She files complaints on behalf of the group’s members to protect their safety, she said.

Two middle schools and one elementary school in Indian River County had “Ban This Book” on their shelves, according to Pippin’s complaint.

After Pippin complained, a district committee reviewed “Ban This Book.” Most of the committee’s members recommended that it stay in schools, but the school board on May 20 voted 3-2 to remove the book from shelves.

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School board member Kevin McDonald said during the meeting that he disagreed with the review committee’s recommendation to keep the book. He said “Ban This Book” encouraged undermining district officials and promoted “inappropriate books.”

“I thought it was ironic that this book is intentionally and overtly saying that school boards shouldn’t matter, only 9-year-olds and librarians should matter,” he said.

In motioning for the vote to remove “Ban This Book,” McDonald said the title was “offensive to a large segment of our parents.”

Gratz, the author, said the ban felt “inevitable” after years of following the stories of other books removed or nearly removed across the country.

“It doesn’t mean that I want to accept it,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that I won’t fight back against it.”

Some of his titles have faced challenges before, Gratz said. Last year, a middle school in Pennsylvania canceled a reading of “Two Degrees,” a book he wrote about climate change, after district officials questioned whether it was appropriate for students.

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But the spectacle of banning a book about banned books brought new attention to Gratz and his work, he said. He’s spent the week fielding calls about the ban, he said.

With his and other books being removed from school shelves, he said he worries the message he was trying to share about bans will be lost.

“I wish that ‘Ban This Book’ didn’t need to exist as a book,” he said. “I would happily take it back.”

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