Utah’s largest public school district is defending its decision to remove 52 books that some parents deemed “pornographic” under a new law restricting age-inappropriate materials.
The Alpine School District, which enrolls 84,000 students in an area 40 miles south of Salt Lake City, recently decided to pull the books by 41 authors from its library shelves after an internal audit flagged them as “sensitive material” without “literary merit.”
Of the books removed, 21 feature LBGTQ characters or themes, including “Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi Picoult, “Forever…” by Judy Blume, and the 2015 Caldecott Honor Book “This One Summer” by Mariko Tamaki.