Facebook<\/a> to warn her followers that her books were potentially being banned, encouraging people to speak up.<\/p>\nBlake Harper, a member of the group challenging the books, addressed the issue at a Tuesday night meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are submitting tonight the first three book challenges,\u201d Harper said.<\/p>\n
Harper declined an interview request from News4Jax but spoke at the meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese books violate state law, period end of story. It\u2019s a binary situation, a black or white situation, I don\u2019t care how you can call it,\u201d Harper said.<\/p>\n
He added the group is focused on process, not attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese violate state statute, there\u2019s no question about it. Now, I want to share with you that the process we\u2019re going through is to keep our mind on business. We\u2019re not interested in grandstanding. We\u2019re not interested in publicizing any of this,\u201d Harper said.<\/p>\n
Bryan Amerling, who attended the meeting with Take Em Down Jax and has two children who graduated from the Duval County School System, pushed back on the challenges.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the First Amendment. It\u2019s a battle over the First Amendment. It\u2019s the right for people to be able to share and express themselves,\u201d Amerling said.<\/p>\n
He argued that those who push for book bans have historically been on the wrong side of the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think just historically, the people who want to ban books are never the good guys. They\u2019re never on the right side of history,\u201d Amerling said.<\/p>\n
Amerling also spoke to the broader dangers of restricting knowledge in schools.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think book banning is fundamentally flawed and I think that in doing so what we\u2019re doing really is limiting knowledge and we\u2019re limiting truth and we are abiding by fear and I think knowledge is something that will cast that out and truth will cast it out and there\u2019s no reason for us to operate from a position of fear,\u201d Amerling said.<\/p>\n
Duval County Schools said it was not aware of any book challenges before the Tuesday night meeting. The district is working to determine where the books are currently offered and whether an official challenge has been formally submitted.<\/p>\n
News4JAX contacted representatives for Picoult asking for an interview but she was unavailable. We followed up asking for a statement and are waiting to hear back.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 A Jacksonville group is challenging three books currently on shelves in Duval County Schools \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[15586,1040,1039,116,118,117,100904,100903,65487],"class_list":{"0":"post-222914","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-dcps","10":"tag-duval-county","11":"tag-jacksonville","12":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","13":"tag-jacksonville-news","14":"tag-jodi-picoult","15":"tag-removals","16":"tag-stephen-king"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}