Dear Selectmen,
Have you browsed in the Dudley Tucker Library lately? I encourage you to do so. There is porn and/ or graphic sexual description in the YA section.
We want to thank Julie Laughner for this Op-Ed – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
Some examples include Gender Queer, The Gentlemen’s Guide to Getting Lucky, and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.
That last book is downloadable as either an ebook or an audiobook. The Director of our library said that kids could get downloadable books without their parents knowing.
This is what one parent said about Me and Earl and the Dying Girl [Editor’s note: Video link in the original letter but not the embed.]
[Language warning – sexually explicit.]
Many of the books have a clear agenda. Many of the new books are about sex, gender, or race.
Many of them are dark and traumatic. I don’t want to pay for books that damage people.
Some examples of traumatic themes:
The summer of bitter and sweet (YA FER).
Everybody looking (YA ILO)/
Kill my Mother series, Graphic novels (“we” bought 3 of this series this year).
#1 The title, “Kill My Mother,” has about as much subtlety as a migraine. But Jules Feiffer isn’t going for subtlety in this, his first graphic novel. Instead he’s going for ricocheting bullets, imploding nuclear families, knuckle sandwiches, booze, broads’s, and paranoia gone ballistic.
Some of the books promote alcohol use. This goes directly against what Raymond Coalition for Youth teaches.
This is all Young Adult. But it doesn’t stop there. For adults, there are 3 parenting books about how to teach your children how to be anti-racist. If you don’t know, anti-racist is code for anti-white. These types of books promote division, not unity. This is not what Raymond represents.
Also:
We too: Essays on sex work and survival, with a foreword by Selena the Stripper.
No more police: a case for abolition.
You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey (791.4502 RUF). This book has a chapter called White Church: The Worst Place on Earth.
Colorization (791.43 HAY). “It seemed as if blacks had yet one more enemy: cinema”
My understanding is that many of the titles are chosen based on reviews by the American Library Association.
They are completely woke and bought for that very reason. This is not a case of censorship or book banning. This is a case of a library employee taking taxpayer money and buying questionable material.
Why are we trying to sexualize and depress our kids? Aren’t they suffering enough already? These books could be Interlibrary loaned if someone wants them. They don’t need to be banned, yet our library doesn’t need to support these authors.
Go to the library and browse for 15 minutes, and you will see what I mean. A group of us went to the library meeting on Thursday to get answers. It was taped, but I don’t see it yet on RCTV. I propose that the library budget by severely cut until there is more equity in the choosing of the titles.
Thank you for your time.
