Annabelle Jenkins walked onto the stage during her graduation ceremony from the Idaho Fine Arts Academy in the West Ada School District with a book tucked into her sleeve.
When she stood before West Ada Superintendent Derek Bub, she slipped out the book — the graphic novel of “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood and Renee Nault — faced the audience and smiled, and handed it toward Bub. It was one of 10 books the West Ada School District had removed from libraries earlier in the school year.
Bub did not take the book. Jenkins dropped it at his feet and walked off the stage without shaking his hand.
A TikTok video she posted of the incident that night garnered over 24 million views and more than 15,000 comments.
What an unnecessarily combative and argumentative response…
I was very charitable, yes? And I explained the process in place for school districts -which are not libraries- yes? I also explained there is no method in place to deliver books by age-yes? We don’t hand out books willy nilly to everyone in schools -which, again: not libraries.
This reads like the ugly kind of censorship. Where: 1) without knowledge of the graphic book, calling for its universal removal from school libraries. 2) not knowing if 14 year-olds should read it, ban it (i.e. ban all books that can’t be read by the youngest library patron; a notion few books could survive). And 3) belittling people (calling those who disagree with uninformed censorship “ass-mad up the wazoo”).
Now there is a little nuance to the post, but it’s outweighed by crude assessments.
Oh my god. The lack of charitability.
I even stated in my post I’m NOT pro banning books. I’m just giving the other perspective. The graphic novel could be fine-it could also have dozens of pages of graphic rape. That’s not my point. My whole point is school districts have a different type of liability.
That’s all.
You know what I didn’t write? I didn’t come out guns blazing:
Sounds like it’s none of your goddamn business what teenagers read
Well no shit Sherlock. That’s not what I’m arguing about.
Schools have libraries, and those libraries are naturally segmented by age because of being attached to a specific school (elementary, middle, high). Kids have to know the book is there and seek it out, so that puts an additional buffer.
Books are also delivered via the classroom. Teachers, of course, exercise judgement there on what is age appropriate, both for content and for reading level. The bar should be higher there because students have little to no choice on the book.
Yes, in the article they mentioned not being able to segment by age at this school. If I understand correctly, high schoolers start around 14 so there is a balancing act required because the liabilities differ from those of libraries.
I find the school’s claim to be a lazy cop-out. My child’s school is K-12, and I recently had to go through a whole paperwork process to give my 3rd grader permission to check out middle school level books.
I totally agree. I think if the school really wanted, they could figure this out somehow.
I thought he was agreeing with you.
They’re saying everyone should check out anything they want at high school libraries. I’m saying school districts are mandated to execute some discretion at what they can provide. The nature of school libraries differs from general public libraries. That’s all.