Christian Hanley, chairman of the state Board of Education’s Instructional Material Review Committee, and attorney John Tyler during a committee meeting Thursday, March 13, 2025. (Screenshot/Instructional Materials Review Committee livestream)
COLUMBIA — Ten more books are slated for removal from South Carolina’s K-12 public school libraries, despite protests from the books’ authors and school librarians.
Librarians have already been required to remove 11 books from shelves since a regulation went into effect last June barring students from accessing books containing “sexual conduct” while at school. Another six books have been allowed to stay, one with the stipulation that parents must give approval before their child can check it out.
The full State Board of Education will make the final decision on whether to keep or retain the books at its April 1 meeting. All are available in at least one high school in the state but not taught in classrooms.
Many of the 10 books the five-member committee voted Thursday to recommend removing tell stories about abuse and persecution, speakers said in asking the committee to keep the books on shelves.
At least three of the books — “Collateral,” “Identical” and “Tricks” — were written to reflect true stories of rape and human trafficking in an effort to encourage teenagers experiencing similar abuse to get help and raise attention for people who know little about it, Ellen Hopkins, the author of those three, told the committee.
“Identical,” for example, reflected the experiences of four of Hopkins’ friends who were molested by male relatives, she said. Readers, many of them teenagers, have written Hopkins letters thanking her for writing a book so similar to their own experiences, she said.
“Not every kid’s life is ideal,” Hopkins said. “Who will speak for them? Somebody has to speak for them, including in school libraries.”
In November, the committee decided another book by Hopkins, “Crank” — about a woman addicted to meth — can be checked out of school libraries only with parents’ permission.
Ivie Szalai, who brought the challenges to the state level, said she has read and enjoyed several of Hopkins’ books. But she doesn’t believe they belong in school libraries, she told board members in the virtual meeting.
“I stand by my stance that I don’t feel that they are appropriate for minor children,” said the Beaufort County parent.
Others, such as “Half of a Yellow Sun” and “Last Night at the Telegraph Club,” tell the stories of historical events. “Half of a Yellow Sun,” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, tells the story of three people during the civil war in Nigeria in the 1960s. “Last Night at the Telegraph Club,” by Malinda Lo, follows a 17-year-old Chinese American girl as she discovers her sexuality in 1950s San Francisco.
“I am a Chinese American lesbian myself, and when I was a teen growing up in the 1980s and ’90s, I often felt alone and confused,” Lo wrote in a letter to the committee. “I didn’t have access to books like this that would have helped me to better understand who I was.
“That’s why I write books about LGBTQ+ and Asian American characters,” Lo’s letter continued. “I’m writing the books I needed as a teen.”
Whether the books are important is not what the committee considers. Board members’ decisions must be based solely on whether the books contain sexual content, said Robert Cathcart, attorney for the state Department of Education.
And in the case of the 10 books committee members considered Thursday, they did, he said.
“While this material likely does contain many important themes and considerations, what this board and the committee is charged with considering is whether or not it’s age and developmentally appropriate,” Cathcart said.
Removing books from libraries takes away chances teenagers might have to find a book that interests them during a time when fewer children are reading for fun, two librarians and a teacher told the committee.
Students who enjoy stories by Sarah J. Maas or Colleen Hoover, two popular authors whose books the committee voted Thursday to remove from shelves, might discover a lifelong love of reading that helps them in other parts of their lives, librarians said.
“I want books in my library that people want to read,” said Laura Haverkamp, a former high school librarian of 24 years in Columbia.
Those students have plenty of other options, Szalai said.
“I hope that in the future that authors, if their target audience is children in high school, let’s say 14 to 18, that they might consider removing that (sexual) material,” Szalai said.
The books heard Thursday all came from Szalai, who said she has children attending Beaufort County public schools. Szalai was also responsible for four previous challenges, which she brought after her local school board decided the books could stay on high school shelves.
Those decisions came before the regulation went into effect.