Williamson County Removes 3 Age-Inappropriate Books From School Libraries

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The Tennessee Conservative Staff –

Another Tennessee county has removed books that were determined to be inappropriate from their school libraries.

In a special meeting on December 9, the Williamson County School Board opted to remove three titles from school libraries while also limiting access to another title.

The board considered the removal of five books:

• “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer

• “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky

• “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens

• “The Field Guide to the North American Teenager” by Ben Philippe

• “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson

A number of community members attended the meeting to oppose the possible removals. Additionally, Board member Eric Welch also spoke out against the removal of some of the books on the list.

Referring to “Speak,” Welch said, “No man has ever raped a woman because of this book. But, we just might stop a date rape because of it.”

One student from the district, Olivia Carroll, also spoke in favor of the book, noting that the book initiated important conversations and also allowed victims of sexual assault to realize they are not alone.

“I encourage the school board to not silence the voices of characters that while fictional, represent the experience of far too many people in our schools,” Carroll said.

In the end, the school board opted to allow “Speak” to remain accessible to high school students but decided to limit access to Philippe’s book to high school juniors and seniors only. The other three books were removed entirely.

The recent removal of books from school libraries is in response to the Age Appropriate Act which makes it mandatory for “school libraries and classrooms to maintain a list of materials in the library collection, to have a policy to screen reading materials for ‘age appropriateness’ and to remove materials that do not meet the criteria established.”

Recently, Rutherford County Schools also removed six books from its libraries, Knox County removed 50, while Wilson County still takes the lead when they voted to remove a total of 425 books from its schools.