A Challenge of My Own

I wonder how many children’s librarians work for forty years without ever facing a challenge to a book in their collection.

I finally had one this summer, when a parent objected to the inclusion of Robie Harris’ much-acclaimed It’s NOT the Stork! on our list of suggested reading for children entering second grade. The parent, whom I’ll call “Dr. Z,” wanted the title struck from the list and also removed from the juvenile nonfiction shelves and placed in our Parenting collection. Dr. Z wrote that its inclusion on the reading list and its placement on open shelves “ignores cultural values of many families.”

As a member of ALSC’s Intellectual Freedom Committee, I felt pretty well-equipped to deal with this matter. Every challenge has individual peculiarities, of course, and I hope it will interest my fellow librarians to learn how it’s playing out here.

Dr. Z’s original complaint was voiced in an email to our Library Director, but I took the lead in responding to her:

1) I explained that the reading lists in question are produced in collaboration between the public children’s librarians and the school media specialists of our school district. There are over one hundred titles on each list and none of them are required reading. In compiling the lists we are careful to include a wide range of books on a variety of subjects, in a range of genres and levels. This is precisely because we feel that will allow individual families to make choices about what their children read. We expect and understand that not every book on the lists will be enjoyed equally by every child in the community. I mentioned that It’s NOT the Stork! had been on the suggested reading list for second graders for three years and that this was the first complaint that we’d received.

 2) I pointed to the starred reviews It’s NOT the Stork! had received in School Library Journal, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews and The Horn Book and that all of these professional review sources suggested that it be used with children in Kindergarten through 3rd grade and that Harris’ book was an American Library Association Notable Book for 2006.

3) I wrote that, since the reading lists are revised annually and titles are dropped and added every year, we librarians would take her concerns into account when drawing up the lists for the summer of 2016.

4) I further noted that because any child under the age of ten must be accompanied by a parent or adult caregiver when using our library, there is ample opportunity for vetting children’s selections, should the adult choose to do so.

In case my answers did not satisfy Dr. Z. and to ensure that she would know that we were taking her concerns seriously, I attached copies of our Materials Selection Policy as well as our Library Materials Reconsideration Policy and Library Materials Reconsideration Form. I also copied the email correspondence to the librarian at the elementary school Dr. Z’s child attends, so that she would be aware of the complaint before the school year began.

Our Library Director contacted ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, to apprise them of the challenge. They offered to help, if necessary, in several ways—including enlisting Robie Harris herself an articulate defender of her own work.

It came as no particular surprise that Dr. Z. did file the Materials Reconsideration Form, again requesting that the book be removed from the reading list and moved from the children’s nonfiction section and into our Parenting collection. In a further email she wrote, “We felt that we deserved some apology for being put in distress for about a month now after a visit to our public library. While you are reasoning about the book’s awards I am left to deal with my son’s hysterical laughing spells…which are giving me insomnia.” Faced with this formal complaint, we proceeded to follow our library’s policies to reconsider the book.

In the meantime, the plot thickened when Dr. Z. informed me that her child’s school principal had promised that the book would be removed from the reading list. Since the school principals aren’t involved in drawing up the lists, I heard this news with some alarm. The school librarian had not contacted me regarding the emails I’d forwarded to her, but given that the original complaint arose at the end of August and that the busy school year had just begun, I understood the delay. But the principal’s promise called for an immediate consultation. We conferred by phone and I learned that Dr. Z. had confronted the principal during Back-to-School Night. In what was probably a defensive move, the principal had, indeed, promised that the book would be removed from the reading list. She knows full well that the lists are compiled by the librarians and was very clear that she doesn’t want to be involved in the process. She’d just made a mistake in the heat of the moment. Her promise did complicate the matter, however.

Back at the Library, we formed a committee of five members: the Library Director, a reference librarian who has two children in the school system, a former Library Board member who is the director of a local preschool, the Youth Services Coordinator of a neighboring library system (our own library system—alas—no longer has a Youth Services Consultant) and me, as Head of Children’s Services. All the members of the committee read the book, the email exchanges, the request for reconsideration, reviews of the book and ALA’s “Library Bill of Rights” and “Access to Library Resources and Services for Minors” in preparation for our meeting.

The committee discussed Dr. Z’s requests in relation to our philosophy and process in composing our suggested reading lists and the composition and function of our Parenting collection. Currently, this collection is comprised of nonfiction for adults concerning parenting issues, but it doesn’t contain any juvenile nonfiction. All of our books on human reproduction—offering a large and varied range of detail and specificity—are shelved with the juvenile nonfiction on open shelves. We talked about the possibility that parents might mistakenly interpret the reading lists as required summer assignments for their children. I assured them that when we visit each class at the end of the school year, as well as any time we help children using the lists during the summer, we stress that the lists are only suggestions and that we are happy to find other books for them if they don’t want to read what’s on the lists. I explained that we try to keep designated shelves stocked with titles from the lists during the summer, but that there are always more titles on the lists than can fit onto those shelves at one time.

The committee decided to advise Dr. Z. that the librarians would take her concerns into consideration when we meet to draw up the reading lists for 2016 and that our copies of It’s NOT the Stork! would remain shelved with children’s nonfiction rather than being relocated to our Parenting collection. Email and postal letters to this effect were sent to Dr. Z. last week. We have yet to hear a response.

How would you have handled this complaint in your own community? Are there reasons you would have approached the matter differently? Would you have come to a different resolution?