Story by Elise Laharia
While her parents were occupied with caring for her grandfather, battling leukemia, 3-year-old Madeleine Magilow, left to her own devices, took refuge in memorizing and teaching herself words from picture books.
Now a junior, Magilow remains an avid reader.
“I've been reading for a very large majority of my life, and they have always been a big comfort to me,” Magilow said. “Books have always had a very prominent space in my life, and they are pretty much everywhere I go.”
With this background of reading, Magilow finds the recent string of book bans in school libraries state-wide disturbing.
“I wouldn't have read a lot of books that I really love if not for school libraries and for libraries in general,” Magilow said. “I think that a lot of people use the library as a personal haven where it's quiet, and you basically have all this information available to you.”
Republican state Rep. Matt Krause launched a Texas House investigation into books available in schools, contacting superintendents and a Texas Education Agency official. He distributed a list of 850 books that he believes should be removed from public school libraries in October 2021. The majority of the books on the list address race, sexuality and gender.
A proposed bill from Gov. Greg Abbott has also raised attention to what materials are available in school libraries. If passed, Abbott’s parental bill of rights would allow parents greater access and control to the school course curriculum, as well as remove material he considers to be pornographic in school libraries.
His proposal would remove school personnel judged to be providing this material and place them on Texas’ “Do Not Hire” list, preventing them from working at any Texas school.
While this discussion regarding banned books is reaching new heights due to the proposed bill and increased media coverage, it is by no means a new issue.
A 1982 Supreme Court case, Island Trees School District v. Pico, ruled that “local school boards may not remove books from school libraries simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books,” and they may not ban books based on “narrowly partisan or political grounds.”
This ruling limits the extent to which books can be banned but does not completely prohibit it. School districts are legally allowed to remove books that contain explicit or vulgar wording or content.
Jennifer Hampton, who has been a librarian at Highland Park High School for four years, points to the American Library Association’s manifesto, emphasizing the importance of reading to democracy, to describe her thoughts on the Texas government’s recent moves.
“I feel like the American Library Association Freedom to Read [statement] should supersede any part of what a politician thinks because we defend what it is that our students want to read,” Hampton said.
She sees her duty as providing a collection that speaks to library patrons.
“It's very difficult, but we want to make sure that everyone is happy and that we still meet the needs of all of our users as well,” Hampton said.
Wendy Woodland, the Director of Advocacy and Communications for the Texas Library Association, or TLA, emphasized that school librarians are there to serve students.
She encourages parents to check in with their children and to ask questions about what they’re reading.
“We absolutely support parents being involved in their children's education,” she said. “It's critical.”
However, Woodland also thinks that challenges should be filed through the correct avenues.
“There’s a way to have that concern addressed and reviewed and decisions made without just reacting to media coverage and selecting a whole group of books to be removed,” Woodland said.
Woodland believes the media attention of book bans inflated challenges made by parents to unprecedented levels. The American Library Association reported a 60% increase in reports of book challenges across the country in 2021.
Books can be removed for a variety of reasons according to Woodland.
“ Of course, books do get out of date,” she said. “They’re no longer popular and they’re no longer being checked out. Librarians are trained to keep their collections current and [remove] books that are no longer factually correct.”
However, the recent removals don’t follow the norm.
“These are books that, for a variety of reasons, people find objectionable,” Woodland said.
Woodland warned parents from protesting a book’s presence in a school library to address personal concerns about their child reading a book.
“There’s a process to handle that,” she said. “But that parent doesn’t decide for all parents, they decide for their child.”
While Hampton has never witnessed a formal challenge being filed to library books, when she was an elementary school librarian, she saw some parents informally complaining about books. She recommends they understand the full context of a book before filing a complaint.
“Where they need to start is to read it from cover to cover,” she said.
The process of adding books to a school library involves input from administration, librarians and students, as well as referencing professional book reviews and circulation numbers.
Woodland thinks people need to keep in mind that librarians have the qualifications to do this job correctly.
“Librarians are highly trained professional educators,” she said. “They [usually] have a Master’s degree, and they've been classroom teachers, and they get a lot of training and professional development on how to develop collections.”
Chiefly, librarians seek to support students’ needs.
“The library books are designed to encourage independent reading,” Woodland said. “They support the curriculum, and address diversity to reflect the community they’re serving. ”
The diversity in school library books is a benefit in Magilow’s eyes.
“What representation primarily does is teach children that it is OK to exist as they are,” Magilow said. “So when you just ban it from schools, all you’re doing is teaching children that is wrong and shameful. It doesn’t give them more time to ‘figure themselves out.’”
Senior Jack Tatum, president of the school’s branch of Turning Point USA, said just like he believes all speech should be allowed, all books should be allowed too, even if they’re negative or hateful.
“I feel like the kid has the right to seek the information,” he said. “That’s how kids are going to learn from right and wrong.”
Tatum does, however, believe parents should have the right to decide whether their children read certain books in class as part of the curriculum. Under HPISD policy, parents do reserve the right to opt for an alternative text.
When it comes to library books, Tatum encourages parents to address their concerns individually with their children.
“It’s the child that’s going up and checking [the book] out and bringing it home,” he said. “If the parent doesn’t want [the child] to do that, then the parent can be a parent and teach the kid better.”
Sophomore Libby McCutchan believes that high school students, who have greater autonomy, are less subject to hard limits of appropriate content than young children.
“Of course, when kids are little, you don’t want them to be reading very explicit books like about sex and things that they shouldn’t read when they’re 2 or 3,” she said. “But I think once you hit high school, and your children are teenagers, they can make their own decisions about what they want to read.”
In Magilow’s view, the issue is more individual, as high schools contain a four-year age range and varying levels of maturity.
“Often, librarians and teachers are experts on this, and on child development in schools, and they should be given the reins for this,” Magilow said. “I will just say that, I think a lot of care needs to be put into what you’re going to be potentially showing children with regards to sexual material.”
However, Magilow doesn’t think bans motivated by aversion to discussions of racism are justified by protective instincts. She referenced a ban in Tennesee of the Holocaust graphic novel Maus to explain why she thinks parents shouldn’t push to ban books to shield students from this heavy content.
“I’m Jewish, so I did not get to choose whether or not I learned about those things, and whether or not to experience that trauma,” Magilow said. “And I assume it’s very, very similar for people of color where they do not get to choose if they experienced trauma due to racism.”
If students who make up the majority don’t read books that discuss persecution of minorities, Magilow sees it as limiting their worldviews and perpetuating issues of discrimination.
McCutchan agrees with Magilow’s view, and believes that as a white person herself, it is her responsibility to read about the experiences of others.
“I think some books are hard to read,” she said. “But they are necessary in order to grow as a person.”