MARIETTA, Ga. — On Tuesday, the Marietta City School Board will decide whether to remove 23 additional books from school media centers.
Dr. Grant Rivera, the superintendent of Marietta City Schools, said the list was created by a committee of educators tasked with reviewing content in the city school district.
"My responsibility was to develop a process where we could work through systematically the 20,000 books that are in our high school media center collection," he said. "This list of 23 books reflects our review of our collection."
The books flagged for "egregious sexual content" are:
- Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany
- Beyond Magenta by Susan Kuklin
- More Happy than Not by Ada Silvera
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chobsky
- Crank by Ellen Hopkins
- The Infinite Moment of Us by Lauren Myracle
- 13 Reasons Why by John Asher
- City of Thieves by David Benioff
- Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera
- A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
- A Court of Thorn and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
- A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas
- A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas
- Lucky by Alice Sebold
- Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
- Blankets by Craig Thompson
- All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
- This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson
- I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle
- It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover
- Identical by Ellen Hopkins
- Grasshopper Jungle: A History by Andrew Smith
- The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
"The reality is that our responsibility in a school district is to make sure that the content we put in front of children is appropriate. And in Marietta, it wasn't our intent to remove any reference to any sex whatsoever," Dr. Rivera said. "For students that are of high school age, it really was to look at a standard and remove things that we felt were egregious."
He said they will not remove a book for reasons other than sexually explicit content.
"In no part of our review did we ever extend that into other areas that weren't about sexually explicit content," he said. "This does not extend to race, religion or ethnicity."
Some parents, like Kayla Sergeant, raised concerns about the type of content being removed. She said many of the flagged books contain LGBTQ characters and/or themes.
"I'm really concerned about the implications for the kids. I know the kids are, too," she said. "It's really sad that the board won't reflect the values and the ideas and the themes that are important to this community."
She and Peter Hardy wish the district would leave decisions like this one up to the parents. Both of them approach the conversation at home in case their kids see something on social media, television or elsewhere.
"We have to have... these conversations and these dialogues at home," Hardy said. If my child picks up a book that's sexually explicit and starts to read it, I'm probably going to know about it because we have this open dialogue."
Hardy hopes board members will listen to their opinions at their meeting Tuesday night.
"Seek out best knowledge of those people that really understand this subject," he said. "Engage the community and have some real stakeholder engagement so that we can help the board make better decisions. "