Conservative parents have swarmed school board meetings in Texas and across the country in recent months to call for the removal of library books that deal with race, racism, sex, gender and sexuality. Some parents have taken it a step further, filling out paperwork to formally challenge the appropriateness of library books and forcing school administrators to review them.
Read more: Books on race and sexuality are disappearing from Texas schools in record numbers. Several titles were targeted in multiple districts. Drawing from those records, below is a list of 50 books that Texas parents tried to ban in A parent asked administrators at the Spring Branch Independent School District in Houston to pull this graphic novel, which features gay and bisexual characters, because she claimed it might lead young students "to question their sexual orientation when they don't even comprehend what that means.
A parent in Prosper, a Dallas suburb, said this illustrated children's book , which touches on the racism that Olympian Wilma Rudolph experienced growing up in Tennessee in the s, should be removed from school libraries because "it opines prejudice based on race.
A parent in Plano said this coming-of-age novel about a Mexican American character's journey to understanding his own sexuality and ethnic identity should be banned because it contains "profanity, pornography, gambling, homosexuality.
A Leander parent suggested replacing children's books that mention gender identity or sexuality, including this one, with "classics," such as "White Fang," "The Indian in the Cupboard," "The Swiss Family Robinson" and Shakespeare. This classic novel by the Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison should be banned from schools, according to a parent in the Fort Worth suburb of Birdville, because it includes a graphic description of rape.
