ESCAMBIA COUNTY, Fla. — Schools in Escambia County have removed more than 1,600 titles from their shelves, including dictionaries, encyclopedias, and the Guinness Book of World Records, to follow a recently implemented state law barring discussion of gender or sexual orientation in grade school.
That's according to the writers' group PEN America, which was recently cleared to move ahead with a lawsuit against the Escambia County School District, joined by publisher Penguin Random House, banned authors, and parents of Escambia County students.
In order to comply with HB 1069, a law restricting material containing "sexual conduct", the school board directed Escambia school librarians to review all books and remove any that may violate the legislation.
According to information shared by the Florida Freedom to Read Project, the county's list of banned books also includes Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon, The National Geographic Kids' Science Encyclopedia, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and the autobiography of Marvel comics creator Stan Lee.
Those books along with hundreds of others are being removed pending review. Florida Freedom to Read Project posted a copy of the standards the school board sent librarians for reviewing the books.
Among the guidelines, the district advises librarians to check book review sites to determine if their title violates HB 1069. One of the sites listed (as optional) is BookLooks, a right-wing book review site founded by former Moms for Liberty member, Emily Maikisch.
As the Tampa Bay Times reported, many of the book complaints and calls for removal in Escambia County have come from the same person: Vicki Baggett, a high school English teacher who has submitted hundreds of complaints of "indoctrination" and apparently copied her complaints from reviews on BookLooks.
PEN America's director of Freedom to Read, Kasey Meehan, told Axios that many librarians are removing the books out of an overabundance of caution and the vague language in the standards like "sexual conduct" or "violence and scariness".
"The books on the list are 'banned pending review,' but we know that review process will be slow and long, keeping books off shelves for months and perhaps even academic years," said Meehan.