Teachers in a Texas school district are rallying to protest the removal of a number of books, mostly graphic novels, from high school reading lists by school officials.
Leander Independent School District (ISD) is a school district based in Leander, Texas. It covers a wide stretch of geography, including Leander, Cedar Park, Georgetown, Jonestown, Round Rock in Williamson County and northwest Austin in Travis County. At issue are the district’s book club reading list, where students are allowed to pick one book from a list of 15 titles chosen for their grade level around a theme each semester. All middle and high school English classes are part of the book club and the idea is to let each kid pick what interests them. However, parents have objected to the choices that their children are being given.
Click the button below to start this article in quick view.
Leander ISD Superintendent Bruce Gearing, Ed.D. released a statement noting that, “For the past few months, we have been listening to our parents and rectifying our mistakes concerning the selection of books in our high school English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms for the student book club units. We would like to address community concerns, take ownership of our mistakes, and clear up misinformation as we continue to repair trust. We acknowledge there was a breakdown in our process as we selected reading material for our student book clubs where students self-select titles from a book club list. We first outlined and addressed this issue and our action steps at our Nov. 5, 2020, Board of Trustees meeting.”
Recently, the list of pulled books grow as the evaluation continues and graphic novels have been particularly hard hit, even when the graphic novels in question are adaptations of acclaimed novels, like Emily Carrroll’s adaptation of Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak. Alexis Huddleston, a teacher in the district tweeted about how upset she was about Speak being removed…
Other classic works that were adapted into graphic novels and then banned were Miles Hyman’s adaptation of “The Lottery” by his grandmother, Shirley Jackson and Renée Nault’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
Another teacher in the district, Zach Long, has been cataloging all of the banned books on Twitter…
It appears every week is now Banned Books Week in @LeanderISD as the district has moved to ban these books. Stop removing important literature from the hands of our students! All students deserve representation in the literature they read at school! #1LISD #LetUsRead pic.twitter.com/GxWlaNJacK
— Zach Long (@englishwithlong) March 10, 2021
The traditional novel, In the Dream House, by Carmen Maria Machado, was perhaps the most prominent book to be protested (as a parent actually brought a sex toy to a district meeting to protest the fact that there is a sex toy used in In the Dream House), but the majority of the pulled books have been graphic novels, especially those with LGBTQ themes.
Other graphic novels that were removed from the reading lists include Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell’s Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, Colleen AF Venable and Ellen T. Crenshaw’s Kiss Number 8, Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta, Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra and Jose Marzan Jr.’s Y the Last Man and John “Derf” Backderf’s My Friend Dahmer.
One of the district parents, Stephanie Bercu, spoke out against the distrct’s decisions, “I’m kind of confused at why there’s a controversy. I am mad that other parents are trying to take away my child’s choice. Whether or not I want to allow my kid to read that book is up to me, but nobody else has the right to remove a choice from my kid without going through proper procedures.”
About The Author
