A Davidson County school board member is challenging four books including Ready Player One and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. He says they’re too graphic for kids.
A Davidson County school board member is pushing to remove four books from school libraries saying they contain sexually explicit and inappropriate material.
Mur DeJonge, who is both a pastor and a newly elected school board member, campaigned last November on addressing what’s inside school libraries. He says parents first raised the issue with him before he ever took office.
“Members of the public came to me and were stating there’s a lot of books in not just Davidson County libraries but across the country that are vulgar and pornographic material in school libraries. That asked if I would be able to see if I thought the same thing and get these books out of the libraries,” DeJonge said.
This year, DeJonge is on a mission to read the books cover to cover and push to remove the ones he finds inappropriate. So far, he has filed formal challenges against four titles: Ready Player One, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Hopeless, and The Art of Racing in the Rain. He says that last book appears in six elementary schools in the district. His challenge cites passages describing a teenage girl’s body and sexual encounters.
“The most shocking things and actually the first four, all of them are very similar is the detail of vulgarity, the descriptive nature of the sexual scenes in these books,” DeJonge said.
2 Wants To Know reviewed copies of the books and confirmed the passages exist and are not taken out of context.
The challenges come as part of a larger statewide debate. Earlier this year, lawmakers considered a bill to remove what they called lewd books from schools, but it failed in committee.
“This is in fact book banning, and a very slippery slope because what you define as wholesome, may not be the same for me,” one lawmaker warned during the debate back in April.
DeJonge insists his efforts are not about erasing books altogether.
“I’m not saying that that book has to be erased from existence … but as a school system we’re there to educate we’re not there to expose our children to things that are inappropriate for their age,” he said.
A district committee recently reviewed DeJonge’s complaints and decided to remove Ready Player One from school libraries. The other three books remain. We have reached out to Davidson County Schools for comment but have not yet heard back.