Clearly Stephen King is no stranger to horror, but even he seems frightened by allegations of book banning in Florida’s public schools —so much so, that he’s calling on the public to defy the bans and read the forbidden titles anyway.
At least four school districts in the Sunshine State have reportedly removed King’s books, either permanently or while pending review, including Collier County, Clay County, Escambia County and Santa Rosa County.
While the removed titles vary district to district, there is one tale about a shape shifting, child eating clown named Pennywise they all have on the chopping block.
In a post that’s already garnered 18.9 million views, King took to X last week to share his thoughts on the matter — and his thoughts are essentially — “WTF?”
But while his post refers to 23 books, Newsweek reported that there are actually 57 of King’s books banned across Florida’s school districts — and another 41 currently being held, pending review.
“I have said it before, and will say it again,” King said in a statement to the news outlet, “When books are banned from school libraries, run to your public library, or the nearest bookstore, and read what it is your elders don’t want you to know.”
Since July 2023, Florida’s HB 1069 mandates that school librarians remove any books they believe contain sexual content. Once flagged, the book is reviewed by a team of media specialists who can either return it to the library or recommend further review by the school board, district, or a committee during a public meeting.
This process builds on HB 1467, passed the previous year, which requires public notice of these meetings and permits parents and community members the opportunity to raise their own objections.
But despite enacting laws that have led to a sharp increase in the removal of books from schools, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis insists that the notion of widespread “book bans” is a “hoax” and argues that Florida doesn’t ban books but has instead “empowered parents to object to obscene material in the classroom.”
In its report, “Banned in the USA: The Mounting Pressure to Censor,” Pen America, a nonprofit focused on free expression, noted that last year, of the 3,362 instances of book banning in public K-12 schools across the country, more than 40% occurred in Florida school districts, with 1,406 book ban cases.
Last week, Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster and Sourcebooks, along with several best-selling authors and additional plaintiffs, collectively filed a lawsuit against Florida public officials, to challenge what they refer to as the “sweeping book removal provisions of HB 1069.”
In court documents, the plaintiffs call many of the removed books, “timeless classics” that are “renowned for their literary value … and “not remotely obscene.”
In a news release about their case, the plaintiffs said that “The list of banned books includes classics such as “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley, “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens, “For Whom the Bell Tolls” by Ernest Hemingway and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain, as well as contemporary novels by bestselling authors such as Margaret Atwood, Judy Blume and Stephen King.”
But DeSantis contends he will continue to “debunk the false narrative that the state of Florida bans books,” and insists the law is designed solely to remove inappropriate material from the classroom.
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Publish date : 2024-09-06 06:50:00
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