Books in the LHS Library: What They Are and How They Got There

The Lowell High School library recently got a facelift, but it wasn’t the new seating options or collaborative learning spaces that received the most attention during a recent Board of Education tour. Instead, it’s what can be found on the shelves that’s been thrust into the spotlight.

There has been talk for years about whether some of the content in books in Lowell Area Schools libraries is inappropriate for minors. Those concerns received national attention when a video of a parent asking “where is the adult book section” was posted and shared online.

The parent asking that question was Stefanie Boone, an Ada resident who has children enrolled at Lowell Middle School and Lowell High School through the Schools of Choice program. A longtime critic of LAS, Boone did not respond to questions emailed to her for this story. When reached on social media, she declined an interview and instead referred Lowell’s First Look to her public Facebook page.

To investigate concerns about the LAS library collection, Lowell’s First Look has reviewed Boone’s Facebook page as suggested, spoke at length with LAS Librarian Christine Beachler and reviewed district policies.

Here’s what we found out.

LAS Libraries: A Brief Overview

Lowell Area Schools maintains building libraries at its four elementary schools, Lowell Middle School and Lowell High School.

While each building has staff who may be referred to as librarians, Beachler is the only person in the district to officially hold that designation. She earned her Master of Library Science from Grand Valley State University in 2001.

Beachler has been with LAS for 37 years, spending her first 12 years as an accounting teacher. For the past 25 years, she has been the district librarian, responsible for overseeing not only books but also computers, chargers and other media items used across all district K-12 buildings.

In total, the district has approximately 100,000 media items. At Lowell High School, there are about 10,000 books and media items on the shelves.

And therein seems to lie the crux of the matter.

Boone argues that parents cannot adequately monitor their child’s reading since LAS has not published a comprehensive list of all the books in the library with questionable content. However, setting aside the fact that every parent may have a different opinion of what is questionable, such a list may be impossible to compile since no one person has – or could reasonably be expected to – read all the volumes on the shelves.

Mature Content Causes Controversy

There are books in the library with adult themes – ones that include swearing, sex scenes and abuse. No one at LAS seems to deny this fact, but they do push back on the assertation that there are pornographic books in the library.

“We don’t have any pornography,” Beachler says. “A 700-page book with four pages of mature content is not written to elicit a sexual response.”

However, there is also an understanding that not all books are appropriate for all students. With that in mind, Beachler has created what she calls the “Suggested for Seniors” list. Books on the list – there are currently 18 – can only be checked out by seniors, although younger students may access them with a parent’s permission. While Beachler says her professional opinion is that books on the list are best suited for the oldest students in the high school, parents have ultimate control over whether their child accesses them. That includes the option for parents of seniors to request that their student be prohibited for checking them out.

Titles on the list include “Looking for Alaska” by John Green, “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson and “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” by Jesse Andrews.

In a recent interview with media personality Justin Barclay, Boone alleged LAS used the COVID-19 pandemic as a cover for stocking library shelves with DEI and sexualized books. However, a review of the dates associated with the books on the “Suggested for Seniors” list shows nine of them were added to the LHS collection prior to 2019 with the earliest addition being “Looking for Alaska” in 2006.

Of the remaining nine books on the list, most are recent purchases. For instance, the library received numerous student requests for Colleen Hoover’s young adult books which were purchased but placed on the senior list.

Boone says the senior book list only contains a small fraction of the questionable books in the library and that she has compiled a list of dozens of books that should be restricted. Beachler says the district repeatedly asked Boone for that list but was never provided a copy. Boone also did not provide the list to Lowell’s First Look when requested.

However, on March 14, Boone posted links on Facebook to the lists she had compiled. Each book on the list has a .pdf from the website BookLooks.org that provides a “Summary of Concerns.” The BookLooks website does not indicate who created and published the information. Its About Us page only references the creators as “concerned parents.”

The lists published by Boone were broken down in the following manner.

(Note: Lowell’s First Look has not independently confirmed whether all the books listed below are in the LAS library catalog.)

Elementary

The elementary list includes 12 books labeled as “DEI books.” These include titles such as “A Family is a Family is a Family” by Sara O’Leary. BookLooks lists “alternate sexualities” as a concern based on three references of a child having same-sex parents. Another book on Boone’s list is “The Undefeated” by Kwame Alexander which is flagged by BookLooks for “racial commentary” because it contains the words “because black lives matter.”

Within the elementary file, there is a list labeled “START HERE.” It includes 75 books, including the 12 that are listed individually. Titles include:

• “Last Stop on Market Street”
• “Saturday”
• “Speak Up”
• “Each Kindness”
• “Trombone Shorty”
• “Hidden Figures”

Middle School

The middle school list has 36 books including “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, which is listed because it “contains references and commentary regarding racism” as well as derogatory terms, inexplicit violence and inexplicit references to sexual assault. “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding is also listed with the reason being mild bullying, violence and mild/infrequent profanity.

Other titles on the middle school list include:

• “Julie of the Wolves”
• “Ready Player One”
• “Drama”
• “A Child Called It”
• “Girls Who Code”
• “The Stars Beneath Our Feet”

High School

The high school file contains 184 titles, ranging from “Pumpkinheads” by Rainbow Rowell which contains “references to sexuality” to “Sold” by Patricia McCormick which is about the sex slave trade and is cited for “explicit aberrant sexual activities including rape of a minor; prostitution; and explicit violence.”

Other titles on the high school list include the following:

• “Flowers in the Attic”
• “Lessons in Chemistry”
• “The Hate U Give”
• “The Kite Runner“
• “Wicked”
• “Water for Elephants”

BookLooks rates books on a 5-point scale, with one being labeled for “child guidance” and five as “aberrant content.” However, it provides minimal details about what criteria is used for each rating level and notes, “ultimately the ratings assigned are our opinions.”

According to Boone’s list, the Lowell High School library has 118 titles rated between a 3-5 by BookLooks as well as nine titles labeled “Pending Review.” Most of these books have been in the library for more than five years.

• Rated 5: Two books (“Sold” and “A Stolen Life”) which were added to the library between the years of 2008-2011.
• Rated 4: 32 books, with 23 acquired between the years of 2006-2019 and nine acquired in 2021 or later.
• Rated 3: 75 books, with 50 acquired between the years of 2005-2019 and 25 acquired in 2021 or later.

Beachler says now that she has seen Boone’s list, she will begin to review the books on it to determine whether any should be added to the “Suggested for Seniors” list.

How Students Use the LHS Library

In the past, books on the senior list were shelved in a separate bookcase behind the main desk. However, they were never checked out, which seemed to defeat the purpose of having books in the library.

Today, books on the senior list are shelved in their respective sections of the library. They are purposely not labeled as senior books so as not to draw attention to them – the thought being that younger students may be more likely to want to read these books if they are labeled for older students.

“Suggested for Seniors” books are flagged in the library system, and if a younger student tries to check one out, library staff will contact the parents for their approval first. Books on the senior list are also removed from Sora – an app that provides digital copies – to ensure they aren’t accessed by younger students there.

Some parents have expressed concern that a younger student may inadvertently pick up a senior-designated book and begin reading it in the library. However, library staff say students rarely – if ever – read books in the library unless they have been checked out.

Instead, students typically use the library as a study space or a quiet spot for lunch. Teachers may bring their classes to the library for projects, but when it comes to reading in the library, that is usually limited to when freshmen English language arts classes arrive to select books to check out. Students may then have some time to read their chosen book before returning to the classroom.

The library is always staffed and should someone see a younger student reading a restricted title without checking it out, the staff member will contact a parent for approval. If a parent cannot be reached just then, the staff member will take the book and hold it for the student until the parent responds.

If a parent is still uncomfortable that their student could be exposed to a book with questionable content, they can contact the school to request that their child be monitored at all times while in the library.

How Books Are Selected for the LHS Library

For some parents, the question is how books with mature themes and adult content end up in the school library in the first place. The answer, at least partially, is that it’s not always obvious when — or to what extent — a book has mature content since most book reviews don’t label books as sexually explicit.

Beachler uses the website Titlewave from Follett Content Solutions to research suggested book titles. Whenever available, the website includes a collection of professional book reviews for a specific title, along with any awards won by the book.

The reviews come from sources such as School Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews and Booklist. They typically include a synopsis and a suggested age or grade level. Of all the review sites, Beachler says School Library Journal is the one she typically looks to first since they tend to be more conservative in their reviews.

For “All Boys Aren’t Blue” – a book that Boone challenged but that was kept in the library by a unanimous vote of the Board of Education – the School Library Journal review recommends it for grades 9 and up. Its review mentions that there are “a few detailed depictions of sexual situations and an incident of sexual abuse by a family member” but doesn’t provide further information beyond that.

When it comes to finding books to purchase, Beachler considers best-seller lists, popular series that are already in the library and recommendations from students and staff.

For instance, it was a former high school library assistant who recommended the purchase of the popular “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series and its placement on the Sora app. However, once Beachler read the series herself, she added it to the “Suggested for the Seniors” list and removed it from Sora.

“I read everything on the banned books list when it comes out,” Beachler says. If LAS has a book on its shelf, she then determines if it should be added to the senior book list. The librarian also evaluates books to be added to the list based on teacher, parent or student feedback.

How Books Are Removed from the Library

Once a book is in the library collection, there are only two ways it is removed: from lack of circulation or by a vote of the Board of Education.

Books that have been in the library for at least 10 years but not checked out in five years may be culled from the collection by the librarian. The only other way for a book to be removed is for it to go through a formal process in which a committee reads the book and makes a recommendation to the Board of Education as to whether it should be retained. The Board of Education has the final decision.

With the exception of replacing damaged copies, Beachler is not allowed to remove books once they have been added to the collection. This school policy is designed to ensure no one person can arbitrarily remove books they might not personally like.

When it comes to complaints about books, board policy states:

“No challenged material may be removed from the curriculum or from a collection of resource materials except by action of the Board, and no challenged material may be removed solely because it presents ideas that may be unpopular or offensive to some.”

A record of all books added and removed from LAS is maintained in the library database and accessible via the Freedom of Information Act.

Parental Tools to Restrict Access to Books

The LAS library collection is available for review by anyone via the Destiny website. While there is an option to make the collection accessible only to those with log-in information, the district has kept their collection public for the sake of transparency.

Parents can review the senior book list using the following steps:

• Log into Destiny Discover with their student’s ID and password.
• Click the cube menu at the upper right corner and select the “Back Office” option.
• Once in the Back Office, go to “My Info” and choose the “Resource Lists” on the left.

Lowell’s First Look has confirmed with the parent of a LAS high school student that they were able to access the list using these instructions.

While in their student’s account in Destiny Discover, parents can also review their child’s check-out history under the “My Stuff” option.

Parents of seniors can request that their students not be allowed to check out books on the “Suggested for Seniors” list, and all parents can ask for restrictions to be placed on their student’s library access. Currently, four families have taken advantage of this option.

If a student has a restriction on their account – such as no sexually explicit material or no books with LGBTQ characters – an internal note will be added at the top of their account. If they attempt to check out a book that library staff has not read, parents will be provided information about the book so they can decide if their child can check it out. If the parent is not comfortable making that decision with the information provided, Beachler will read the book and make a recommendation, although it may take some time for her to do that.

Students who have content restrictions on their account will also lose access to Sora since there is no way to place student-specific restrictions on accounts in the app.

Parents who would like further restrictions to their student’s access to the library – such as having them closely monitored while in the room – can contact library staff to make those arrangements.

Note: Lowell’s First Look is an Amazon affiliate, and Amazon links on this website are affiliate links.