GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A total of 8 books a community member asked Northview Public Schools to remove from their shelves will stay put.
Superintenent Christina Hinds sent a note home to families Thursday announcing a review committee charged with reviewing those books made their decision after months of consideration and input from the public.
The review committee found none of the books meet the definition of sexually explicit material when read in their entirety and considered as a whole, nor do they violate the Michigan Revised School Code.
The books, which are available to students in grades 7-12 as optional reading, will remain accessible.
If the peteitioner wants to appeal this decision, that person has 30 business days to write a written request to the Board of Education.
The books that the committee considered were:
- Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas
- Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
- Push by Sapphire
- All Boys Aren't Blue by George M Johnson
- Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison
- Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
- Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
All of the books listed above are optional reading and only available to students in grades 7 through 12.
The books' themes range from sexual abuse by a parent, exploring teenagers' sexuality, and coping with death and racism in America. Several of the books also contain LGBTQ+ themes.
Many of the books have had both successful and unsuccessful attempts to ban them in other schools across the country. Complaints about the books usually focus on graphic content, sexual content and LGBTQ+ themes. Some of the books have been labeled as "pornography" by parents in school districts in other states.
One of the books, The Bluest Eye, was written by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison in 1970 and is now considered to be an "American Classic" by many critics.
The Bluest Eye was banned in Wentzville, MO in 2022 and was challenged twice in Michigan in Howell in 2007 and Northville in 2016. Both of the Michigan challenges to remove the book from AP curriculum in the districts failed and it is still assigned reading to this day.
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