Ayanna Mayes’ job is to expand young people’s understanding of the world.
She does this as a librarian at Chapin High School, providing access to books that can enhance their educational experience.
Lately, however, she has found herself shrinking the options available to the school’s students.
Ever since last year, when the State Board of Education took on the power to ban books from public school campuses statewide, she’s taken the proactive step of removing books herself, so she doesn’t have to repeat the “unpleasant” process of taking a book away from a student.
“If it looks like based on their conversation they’re going to recommend a book for removal, then before it’s even official I collect the book,” Mayes says.
Before the state policy shift, the Lexington-Richland 5 school board voted to remove books in the “Court of Thorns and Roses” fantasy series by Sarah J. Maas from district schools including Chapin High in December 2023, reversing a decision by a district review committee of teachers, parents and librarians. Mayes had to retrieve copies of the books that had already been checked out by students. It’s an experience she doesn’t want to relive.
“At least one student I had to find in class and get the book from her, so that I could be compliant. It really feels like you’re betraying your student,” she said. “I thought, ‘I probably scared this child, and she’s never going to come back to the library.’”
But Mayes said the student she took Maas’ book from has since returned to the library.
The reason the Chapin librarian is pulling more books from the shelves is a new statewide regulation introduced by state education Superintendent Ellen Weaver. Enacted in the summer of 2024, bypassing approval by the state Legislature because of a technicality, it gives the state board the authority to govern the selection of materials in schools and school libraries and dictate what is “age and developmentally appropriate” and “educationally suitable” under state law. When a book is removed, it’s removed from every school, regardless of student age or grade level.
The state board has already banned 11 books from South Carolina schools so far this academic year. It’s set to consider 10 more for removal this week.
The volume of book challenges at the state and district level, the pace at which they’re occurring, and the confusion surrounding them has caused uncertainty and anxiety among the people tasked with providing reading material to developing young minds, and added new burdens to a school librarian’s job.
‘Chilling effect’
Considered one of the country’s most restrictive policies, critics call South Carolina’s new book regulation “censorship.”
It has created a “chilling effect,” for teachers and librarians, said Paul Bowers, a spokesman for the ACLU of South Carolina. Teachers and librarians and increasingly second-guess their own judgment as professionals.
“There’s a real climate of fear that this policy has created,” Bowers said. “That’s one of the problems with censorship, it goes beyond the specific texts and sows a lot of fear and creates some chaos.”
It has gotten the attention of librarians like Mayes. Decisions to keep or remove books from library shelves had previously been in the hands of local school boards. Now, the state board’s decisions are ultimately binding for all school districts in the state.
Even before the Lexington-Richland 5 school board decided to pull the Maas series, Irmo High School librarian Erin Parker said she had already removed one book in the series, “A Court of Mist and Fury,” which was the subject of the initial complaint to the school board.
So when the state education board added several books to its agenda last month to consider removing them from schools, she again preemptively gathered the books from shelves.
Evaluating books for their educational suitability and age appropriateness is something Parker learned from more than a decade working in school and public libraries, and she thinks it’s something best done by librarians who know their students and their communities.
“Making those decisions, knowing your population, knowing what’s good for them, is why we’re trusted as professionals, but that’s not how we’re treated,” she said.
“I have had a kid come to me and said, ‘I don’t think this is right for me,’” Parker continued, adding that this can lead to enlightening conversations about a student’s feelings toward a book and what they are looking to get out of reading. “Those are the conversations they want to take away from us.”
But at a time when schools’ book choices are coming under greater scrutiny, a librarian’s judgment can be questioned. In 2022, some parents were concerned about the book “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” a 2020 memoir about author George M. Johnson growing up queer and Black. Some objected to the book’s sexual content.
“There were parents who went to the school board and read excerpts,” Parker said. “I was the only one with that book here. They called me a pedophile, a groomer, said I should be arrested, but they never actually challenged the book.”
Parker does her research when considering what books to bring into the Irmo High School library. She reads Kirkus Reviews and talks to colleagues at other schools to get a sense of what their students are interested in. She has gone to the school board and invited them to visit the Irmo High library to see how it operates and what students are doing there. Two board members took her up on the offer, she said.
“I hope it helps them understand us and our mission,” Parker added.
’We’re just guessing’
Sherry East, president of the South Carolina Education Association, said she’s heard of such self-censoring, like Parker’s, out of fear of running afoul of the new restrictions, while some districts have become stricter about what materials can be brought into the classroom and how closely districts can vet them.
It’s difficult for local schools to know how to keep on the right side of the new regulations because they’re so broad and seemingly enforced unevenly, said Jamie Gregory, the upper school librarian at Christ Church Episcopal School in Greenville and president of the South Carolina Association of School Librarians.
“The state board is arbitrarily applying the rules to the books it considers,” she said. “They say the book is age inappropriate and therefore it’s inappropriate. We’ve asked them to clarify those terms. If they used the state obscenity law, that would be helpful. [But] if you’re arbitrarily implementing the regulation, it’s impossible for school librarians to know if buying something violates the regulation.”
She cites the challenge the state board considered for George Orwell’s 1949 classic warning of the dangers of totalitarianism because of its sexual content.
“They should have banned ‘1984’ but chose not to,” Gregory said. “Their legal counsel said the sexual content in it was short. That’s very arbitrary. It doesn’t say that in the regulation.”
If schools are pulling books based on “guess work,” she says, it will not only create headaches for staff, but it’s also denying students their right to access the reading material of their choice.
“It violates the constitutional rights of students to receive information, because we’re just guessing, and there’s no clear guidance,” Gregory said. “Most of the [challenged] titles involve people from marginalized communities, LGBTQ, Black and BIPOC communities. If schools decide preemptively not to even order those titles, that also violates students’ constitutional rights.”
“1984,” along with “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Romeo & Juliet” were in the first round of books considered for statewide removal.
Parker says students are aware when books are being challenged.
“They do follow more than you think. They come and say, ‘This book has been removed, is this one next?’” she said. “A lot of them want to know what’s in the book to have it removed. I say there are a lot of things in any book, but if you want to know what’s specifically challenged, you can actually read the challenge on the state department website. Not my job to tell what to think or how to think, but where they can find information.”
Mayes said she has difficulty communicating why a particular book might be removed.
“They look a little confused,” she said. “Some are aware [of the discussion] and others aren’t. The only thing I’ve said is, ‘I’m sorry.’ With the first one I was sorry the school had decided to no longer use this book, and that’s pretty much it.”
’Pretty tedious’
School districts had to change the way they handled parental complaints after the state board adopted its new regulations last year.
As outlined by the Lexington 1 school district, any parent or guardian can file a challenge to a book, provided they have read or viewed the material they are challenging. A parent is required to first bring their complaint to their teacher, librarian or school administrator, and are limited to five complaints per month by the state policy.
The complaint must be reviewed first by a school committee and then a district-level committee comprised of school staff, librarians, administrators, parents, community members and clergy. Their decision is then forwarded to the school board for a public hearing, such as one the Lexington district recently held to consider a challenge to the dystopian young adult novel “The Hunger Games.”
The reviewers must find that the material is both age and developmentally appropriate and aligned with South Carolina’s instructional program to retain the material in schools. Classroom instructional materials must be selected from a list approved by the state board, and librarians have latitude to assess the appropriateness of materials to be added to the school library.
The state’s librarians already strive to be respectful of parental rights and concerns, Gregory said, but they also work to make different materials available to those who do want to access them.
“The library is a place of voluntary inquiry,” she said. “But just because you may not want your child to read something, doesn’t mean it’s pornographic and can be removed from another student, if another student’s parents would want their child to read that.”
The librarians who spoke to The State said the push to remove those books is adding to their work load.
“I never created a book order thinking about that through the lens of someone who might challenge these books,” Mayes said. “I never created literacy programs through the lens of someone who might challenge books before.”
It’s changed the way Mayes goes about her daily routine in Chapin.
“Some are good practices, like I read every book review available from all of my reliable sources for every book that I’m considering purchasing,” she said. “That’s pretty tedious. I submitted a book order yesterday and I read, oh gosh, 435 pages of reviews. Before, I probably would have read one review or two reviews on a book.”
‘We are here to help’
Emilie Vigliotta, a senior at the University of South Carolina, helps run EveryLibrarySC, a student-led campaign that highlights librarians and connects community members with resources. The group often hears from parents and policymakers, but student perspectives can get lost.
“Diverse voices and diverse books should be available to students of all different backgrounds,” Vigliotta said. “People should see themselves in the books that they’re reading.”
She recalls when she read “Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky when she was younger. She loved it and learned a lot from it. The book was removed from the state’s school library shelves in February.
“It’s a little sad,” Vigliotta said. “That’s now one story less that’s available to share.”
Democrats in the state House introduced a bill in February to affirm student access to “diverse and developmentally appropriate reading material,” called the “Freedom to Read Protections and Respect for School Library Media Specialist Autonomy Act.” It would empower school librarians to independently make certain decisions about their collections, and would set requirements for book challenges. It was referred to the Committee on Education and Public Works, where it remains.
If parents have an objection to a book and don’t want their child to read it, Mayes said she or any other librarian can put a note into their information system that can prevent the child from checking that book out.
“If somebody finds something that I missed, if they come to me and talk to me, I will gladly correct my mistake,” Mayes said. “It doesn’t need to go to the state Department of Education in order to bring attention to something that someone thinks is not appropriate. You’re skipping a lot of steps there.”
She hopes parents at her school will bring those concerns to her before it gets that far.
“I hope that we can get back to a point where we work together, because I have a different lens as a parent than I do as an educator, and I find that it helps me to be able to talk to my child’s teachers and they are there to help,” Mayes said. “We are here to help.”
