Across Texas, school districts are reassessing what books belong on the shelves of school and classroom libraries. At the same time, the State Board of Education is in the process of hashing out what books students should read in class, including whether Bible stories should be incorporated into instructional materials. 

At school board meetings in April and May, Celina ISD voted to remove eight books from libraries in the district based on recommendations by the library council formed last year under Senate Bill 13. The bill created a process for parents and community members to submit challenges to library books.

The state was right to recognize the need for community standards, but Celina’s choices about what books can stay and those that should go raise questions about how these recommendations are made and what the basis of the complaints are. 

Among the books that will be removed are multiple novels by Pulitzer Prize-winning authors, including Toni Morrison’s Beloved, about a formerly enslaved woman haunted by her baby’s ghost, and The Bluest Eye, which explores how white beauty standards affect Black girls and women. Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 for her body of work. The district also voted to remove Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, a novel about the lives of Black women in early 20th-century rural Georgia that tackles topics like domestic and sexual abuse. 

These weren’t the only books that were removed. The board voted to remove eight titles in total that span a range of topics, but these three stood out as the most acclaimed. 

In district documents, Celina indicated that Beloved was removed for indecent content, The Bluest Eye for obscene content and The Color Purple for profane content. 

Meanwhile, Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing, a fictional murder mystery whose author is tied to an unsolved 1996 murder in Zambia, was allowed to stay. At the May meeting, the board noted that Owens’ novel is a class reading for high school seniors. The district did not respond to our calls about whether Beloved, The Bluest Eye or The Color Purple are also class reading. 

There’s no doubt that Morrison’s and Walker’s books contain difficult topics like the legacy of slavery and segregation. The books do contain passages with profane or explicit content. But the inclusion of this content has a greater educational value. In these three books, it helps illustrate the history of slavery and Jim Crow and their lasting impact on American society. 

It’s important that these books and evaluations of their educational value are taken in the context of the entire text, and we are worried that discussions by the library advisory council may be missing some of that context. 

In the district’s executive reports, some of the library advisory council members directed to review the books reported not having read the books or only having read part of them.

The council members tasked with making recommendations to the school board should thoroughly evaluate each complaint, which requires reading the full text. A tally of profane language or isolated passages may look alarming on their own. It would be hard to make an informed decision about a book’s overall educational merit without understanding how the cited excerpts function in the context of the entire book.

Additionally, since the council’s first meeting in November last year, only about four members have been at each meeting. The council consists of seven voting members. Library council members are volunteers, but this is important work, and those signing up for the position should attend regular meetings. 

The district does have valid concerns about books available to young students. We agree that The Color Purple shouldn’t be available to middle schoolers. But removing the book isn’t the right call. A better approach would be to limit the text to high school students. 

And removing the titles altogether feels unnecessary given that Celina already has policies in place granting parents authority over the books their children read at school. At the board’s May meeting, Kyla Prusak, the district’s chief academic officer, said parents can block their children from reading any book in the library and they can also opt in to be notified of every book their child checks out.

An influx of students jumping to get their hands on these titles doesn’t seem to be a problem, either. There is one copy of Beloved in the high school library, and according to district documents, the book hasn’t been checked out since 2010. The Color Purple was last checked out in 2012. 

Students should still have the option to find these books on the shelf. Most probably won’t choose them, but removing them takes away the opportunity altogether.  

A student might reach for one of these titles to learn more about an important period in American history, and this could prompt a discussion with a parent or teacher. There should be a place for this type of learning for students who seek it out. 

And we have welcomed reports that students are checking out more books at school following the state cellphone ban. Students today are exposed on their phones to material far more graphic, unfiltered and exploitative than anything they are likely to encounter in a school library. 

More students pulling these award-winning titles off the shelves would be something to celebrate, not prevent.

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