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Comment by 0x3444ac53

2 days ago

No. It seems like there was an age appropriate sexual health book for 9-12 year olds

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_Perfectly_Normal

I have another comment on this thread where I linked a lot of related information about this.

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0x3444ac53

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apparent  2 days ago

That was the only book that patrons sought to have removed from the kids' section?

Thanks for the wikipedia link. The criticism section is particularly enlightening:

> In a 2023 Slate article, Aymann Ismail, who until then had considered most attempts to ban books hysterical, was taken aback by the book's explicitness.

  • 0x3444ac53  2 days ago

    The important thing to note is that the book is being called "pornography" by the Clean Up Samuels group. It is explicit, but it is not pornographic. There are many many other books they want to ban completely simply because they features trans or gay characters.

    While digging for this there does seem to be a young adult novel about a young gay man that does feature sexually explicit content (although it doesn't appear pornographic at all). The library keeps it in the "New Adults section. Which requires that anyone under age get explicit permission from their guardian to access, and they even created a new kind of library card to help moderate said access.

    • ryandrake  2 days ago

      Your distinction between "explicit" and "pornographic" is important, and often not well understood (or actively ignored) by book opponents. There is nothing wrong with explicit, but age appropriate content. You can't really properly teach someone about sex without getting explicit, after all. A book that says "When two people love each other, they go into the bedroom together, and uhhhhh.... , and then a baby arrives!" is not really doing the job.

  • 0x3444ac53  2 days ago

    It seems that reference is actually slightly cherry picked. The article it is lifted from [0], is the author reflecting on his own discomfort with the text, the same discomfort he believes drives the people wanting it be be banned. Ultimately he makes the case that books like this are actually ultimately a good thing.

    [0]: https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/09/banned-books-list-i...