It's Easy to Sow Panic When You're Just Lying
The lack of expertise or knowledge about children's literature is on full display when most of your new reviews are of adult books.
With the closure of BookLooks in March this year, one of the many book rating sites run by book banners "parental rights” advocates has stepped up its game. RatedBooks is the work of several groups, including Utah Parents United, No Left Turn in Education, the Pavement Education Project, and the standalone Facebook groups of LaVerna in the Library and her state-level sister pages Mary in the Library. It is very similar to BookLooks in that it utilizes content ratings on a zero to five scale.*
RatedBooks updates their review database every month with the new books that have been reviewed by their volunteer parents. These parents aren’t experts on literature, librarianship, education, literacy, nor child development. They’re parents with a political agenda, teasing sections of books out of context to apply a rating and provide “proof” of “inappropriate content” via sheets these parents can then use to challenge material.
The expertise of the raters is on full display for the month of July when it comes to where and how the work being done is intended to deceive the average person. RatedBooks added 24 new reviews to their database in July. Of those 24 titles, a full eighteen are books written, marketed, and published for adults. Except for three of the titles–The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest J. Gaines, and Bag of Bones by Stephen King, three books/authors who are long-time staples in curriculum and/or library collections for tweens and teens–these books would almost never be available in public school libraries or public libraries for young readers.** The books that were rated for July are primarily the titles and authors whose work would be considered contemporary romance.
Naturally, these books earned ratings reflecting the fact they’re books for adults.
There are how many hundreds of thousands of books written for readers between the ages of preschool to the end of high school, but fully three-fourths of the titles reviewed to “help parents” in July were written for adult readers.
Yet by presenting adult titles in this way, alongside books that are very much written, published, and marketed for young readers, it’s easy for the group to continue stoking moral panic about the content of books available for young people in the library.
One of the things that folks in the associated Facebook groups of LaVerna in the Library and Mary in the Library like to do when new RatedBooks reviews drop is list where they’re finding the books in their own school districts. For this latest batch of reviews, one person shared their findings from a local district.
The seven books available in Utah’s Tooele County Schools are The Glass Castle, a 20-year-old book that’s been available and used in schools nearly that entire time because it’s about growing up; Loathe to Love You, an adult romance novella collection by a super popular author that is only available in the high school; Better Than The Movies, a YA romance; Bag of Bones, which again, Stephen King is perennially popular with middle and high school students and this is only at the junior highs and high schools; Hell Followed With Us, a YA book only available in the high school; 99 Days, a YA book only available in the high school; and The New Girl, a middle grade book available in the junior high.
Tooele County’s school libraries look like they’re doing a pretty good job at, well, their job.
The leap between “these books are on shelves in age-appropriate school library collections” and “ask”ing the district to review them based on the ratings by volunteers of an agenda-driven “parental rights” group is wild. This is a review site that just updated their rating system because they’re confronted with the fact they don’t know what they’re doing.
It’s wild, too, the lack of curiosity about which books are being reviewed for RatedBooks, who they’ve been written for, and what’s actually available in school libraries. The folks following these right-wing political groups take what’s fed to them without an ounce of their own critical thinking or without asking questions about the process itself. It’s the exact opposite of how they engage with the transparency about decision making in their public schools and public libraries.
Just because a book is available in a school library or public library, that doesn’t mean it’s being promoted or displayed with the intent to reach everyone utilizing that space. Not every book is for every reader. That’s why libraries have such an array of material–not to mention that’s one of the five laws of library science that trained professionals know like the back of their hand. These adult contemporary romances are indeed available in plenty of public libraries across Utah and the nation. But they’re not going to be sitting on a display in the children’s or teen areas. That’s ridiculous, and yet, it is the pervasive belief among banners who have not a clue how libraries or schools actually operate. Conspiracy theories spread in Facebook groups are just that.
There’s a second piece to this, too.
All of the inclusion of adult novels on RatedBooks and similar sites gives the folks whose lives are tied up in complaining about books in libraries the chance to also feel they’ve got a win. They’re able to quietly celebrate that most of these books aren’t sitting on shelves, thanks to the hard work myself and other “parental rights” advocates have put in.
Really, these books aren’t there because library workers used their education, experience, and expertise to select materials that are age- and developmentally- appropriate for their readers.
Truth never matters.
It’s worth briefly addressing that this batch of new RatedBooks reviews isn’t an anomaly. It is the laying down of tracks for the next target in the far right’s crusade to eradicate anything outside of their narrow and suffocating belief system. To dictate the right and ability of other grown adults to make decisions for themselves and their families.
Six of the 24 book reviews published by RatedBooks in July earned “aberrant/deviant content” ratings. Most of the books earning this distinction in the last several months of book reviews? Most of the books in the entire category of “deviant content?”
Adult romance novels.
Parental groups like this issuing ratings to adult romance novels are not alone in unraveling the next steps in the plan to censor what is available in public, democratic institutions. They’re aided and abetted by politicians who’ve also started to soft-launch legislation that would ban romance. That’s what the erasure of the third prong of the Miller Test is all about.***
It is not, nor has it ever been, about protecting “our” children. It’s been about the far right’s realization that their shaky belief system hinges upon them dictating the morality of everyone they can.
The lies are their only moral compass.
Notes
*RatedBooks ported to their database the work from BookLooks to keep it alive. Over the last month, leaders behind RatedBooks have been working to re-create their ratings scores because “the garbage keeps getting worst.” That’s book banner-ese for they don’t know what they’re doing.
**It would not be surprising nor inappropriate, however, to see some of these available in school libraries. If there’s community interest, that’s one reason they may be there. High schoolers wanting to read Emily Henry isn’t a leap, nor inappropriate. Another reason? To reach faculty and staff who may wish to read them, as they, too, are part of the school community. School libraries support curriculum and provide materials for entertainment and enjoyment of users.