was originally reported by Nadra Nittle and Mariel Padilla of .

When the U.S. Naval Academy tied to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) from its library, retired Commander William Marks saw more than censorship — he saw a threat to the Navy’s future. But last week, after immense public outcry, most of those books returned to Nimitz Library shelves.

“Do you believe it?” asked Marks, a 1996 alum who spearheaded a campaign to maintain student access to the books. “What great news. We’re thrilled.”

All the books the academy removed in early April had one thing in common: Officials flagged them for DEI themes. They include Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” and Elizabeth Reis’ “Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex.” The purge followed directives from Trump-appointed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has called DEI initiatives “divisive.”

Determined to ensure that students could still read the works, Marks began on April 5.

“The motto of the Naval Academy is ‘from knowledge, seapower,’” said Marks, who served as a Navy commander for 22 years. “What we mean is without knowledge, education and intellectual growth, we will never become a strong Navy. So this contradiction really struck me, that instead of encouraging knowledge and encouraging discussion, the Pentagon was actually suppressing knowledge and limiting discussion.”

About 4,400 students, members of the Brigade of Midshipmen, attend the Naval Academy while on active duty in the U.S. Navy. After graduation, they are required to serve in the Navy or Marine Corps for at least five years. Women represent more than a quarter of the student body, while men make up over 70 percent of midshipmen.

Initially, Marks hoped to fundraise $3,810, which he figured would be enough to cover the cost of the books pulled from Nimitz Library. Since Marks lives in Arlington, Texas, he tapped Old Fox Books & Coffeehouse in Annapolis, Maryland, home to the academy, to be his local partner.

Donations have far exceeded his goal, topping $70,000.

Jinny Amundson, an owner of Old Fox Books, said by the time she got the call from Marks, she had already heard about the books removed and had started compiling a list of them to purchase for the store’s inventory.

“For a bookseller, the idea of censoring any kind of books just gives us heart palpitations,” Amundson said. “And it’s our community. The [midshipmen] think of our shop as a place that they love and one of their sort of unofficial bookstores. We have the mids, the faculty, the administration that come in and think of our space as their own.”

Amundson said she understood that the removal of books was an order, which has to be followed within the military. But she found the loophole: Her bookshop could store the titles targeted. It is conveniently located about a block away from the Naval Academy gates.

The day before the institution’s May 23 graduation, Amundson learned that most of the pulled books were back on the library’s shelves. She went to see for herself, took pictures of the books and sent them to many of the authors, who had personally contacted her when the restrictions on the works took effect.

Now, just 20 books are being sequestered pending a formal compliance review, according to the Department of Defense. A Navy spokesperson did not provide details to The 19th about those titles. Ultimately, a narrowing of the search terms used to flag books for review resulted in the return of hundreds of books to the Nimitz Library, as the Department of Defense first issued broad guidance about book removals to the military services.

“What struck me was the very arbitrary and even cruel nature of the books that got removed,” Marks said. “These books were a cross-section of American culture. They were important to the discussion of American history.”

In an updated May 9 memo, the Pentagon instructed the military services to use 20 search terms to pinpoint books in their academic libraries that might need to be set aside because of how they engage race or gender. Among those terms were affirmative action; critical race theory; gender-affirming care; transgender people; and diversity, equity and inclusion.

People across the political spectrum expressed alarm about the book restrictions, which have been widely opposed, according to Marks. “We really shouldn’t be banning any books,” he said. That includes those with unpopular, or even offensive, ideas like Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” which managed to evade the Naval Academy’s book purge, he noted.

He calls his effort to maintain the midshipmen’s access to all books in the Nimitz Library , after the 1969 Angelou memoir that was likely targeted because it describes racial segregation and child abuse.

The name Operation Caged Bird also alludes to the feeling of being restrained by censorship. “I almost felt like I could feel the bars closing in on me in terms of what I can read and can’t read,” Marks said. “That didn’t sit right.”

Marks’ GoFundMe campaign has raised enough money to supply 1,000 books in 2025 and fund a three-year initiative at Old Fox, ensuring midshipmen can access any contested title for free.

“If you’re a midshipman and you’re writing an essay paper and there’s a book you can’t find, maybe it’s been removed or banned, you can call them, and they’ll order it for you, and then you just pick it up free of charge,” Marks said. He’s also coordinating with other service academies, anticipating similar battles.

At the Navy’s three other educational institutions, fewer than 20 books have been flagged as potentially incompatible with the military’s mission, as have a few dozen at the Air Force Academy and other Air Force academic institutions. The Army has also been ordered to assess library books at its educational institutions, but a spokesperson from West Point told The 19th that no books have been pulled at this time, as its compliance review is still underway.

The return of nearly 400 books to the Naval Academy library coincides with a pending of violating K-12 students’ constitutional rights for limiting books and subject matter related to gender, race and sexuality. The American Civil Liberties Union filed E.K. v. Department of Defense Education Activity in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on behalf of 12 students. A hearing will . The ACLU seeks a preliminary injunction to give the youth access to materials it argues have been restricted to align with President Donald Trump’s executive orders and political agenda.

Amundson said she was pleasantly surprised that it took just weeks for the books to be returned to the Naval Academy.

“I believe that what happened and the response that was given in Annapolis — I think that made the administration be much more careful this time around as they’re going for these other libraries, the other Department of Defense libraries around the world,” she said.

Amundson said using the funds raised from the GoFundMe campaign, the bookstore was able to give away nearly 500 books in the days leading up to the  Naval Academy graduation. For weeks, letters of support piled up and people stopped by the bookstore with gratitude, some even driving from hours away to show their support in person.

In addition to Operation Caged Bird, Amundson said there were “powerful arms at work.” There was pushback on the book removals from members of Congress, the Naval Academy’s Board of Visitors and the superintendent — who wrote an open letter signed by hundreds of alumni.

“For right now, this was a huge win for us,” Amundson said.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear an appeal from a group of Montgomery County parents challenging a school system policy that does not let them opt their lower elementary school children out of classes that use LGBTQ+ books.

Karen Grant and fellow school librarians throughout New Jersey have heard an increasingly loud chorus of parents and conservative activists demanding that certain books — often about race, gender and sexuality — be removed from the shelves.

In the past year, Grant and her colleagues in the Ewing Public Schools just north of Trenton updated a 3-decade-old policy on reviewing parents’ challenges to books they see as pornographic or inappropriate. Grant’s team feared that without a new policy, the district would immediately bend to someone who wanted certain books banned.

Around the same time, state lawmakers in Trenton were readying legislation to set a book challenge policy for the entire state, preventing book bans based solely on the subject of a book or the author’s background or views, while also protecting public and school librarians from legal or civil liabilities from people upset by the reading materials they offer.

When Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy signed that measure into law last month, Grant breathed a little easier.

“We just hear so many stories of our librarians feeling threatened and targeted,” said Grant, who works at Parkway Elementary School and serves as president of the New Jersey Association of School Librarians. “This has been a wrong, an injustice that needs to be made right.”

Amid a national rise in book bans in school libraries and new laws in some red states that threaten criminal penalties against librarians, a growing number of blue states are taking the opposite approach.

New Jersey at least five other states — California, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington — that have passed legislation within the past two years that aims to preserve access to reading materials that deal with racial and sexual themes, including those about the LGBTQ+ community.

Conservative groups have led the effort to ban materials to shield children from what they deem as harmful content. In the 2023-24 school year, there were 10,000 instances of book bans across the U.S. — nearly three times as many as the year before, according to by PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for literary freedom.

“Certain books are harmful to children — just like drugs, alcohol, Rated R movies and tattoos are harmful to them,” Kit Hart, chair of the Carroll County, Maryland, chapter of Moms for Liberty, a national organization leading the book banning effort, wrote in an email.

But some states are now safeguarding librarians and the books they offer.

“State leaders are demonstrating that censorship has no place in their state and that the freedom to read is a principle that is supported and protected,” said Kasey Meehan, director of the Freedom to Read program at PEN America, which has been tracking book bans since 2021.

The drive to ban certain books is not waning, however. While a handful of states fight censorship in school libraries, some communities within those states are attempting to retake local control and continuing to remove materials that conservative local officials regard as lurid and harmful to children.

‘Lives are in the balance’

The New Jersey not only sets minimum standards for localities when they adopt a policy on how books are curated or can be challenged but also prevents school districts from removing material based on “the origin, background, or views of the library material or those contributing to its creation.”

The law also gives librarians immunity from civil and criminal liability for “good faith actions.”

New Jersey state Sen. Andrew Zwicker, a Democrat who introduced the legislation, said until recently he thought that book bans were a disturbing trend, but one limited to other states. But early last year, he went to a brunch event and met a school librarian who told him she faced a torrent of verbal and online abuse for refusing to remove a handful of books with LGBTQ+ themes from her library’s shelves.

“That’s when I realized that I was so horribly mistaken, that these attacks on librarians and on the freedom to read were happening everywhere,” Zwicker told Stateline. “I went up to her and asked, ‘What can I do?’”

He said he’s already heard from lawmakers in Rhode Island who are considering introducing a similar measure this year.

A child who identifies with the LGBTQ+ community can read a memoir like “” by Maia Kobabe and feel seen for the first time in their lives, he said.

“I do not think it’s an overstatement to say that lives are in the balance here, that these books are that important to people, and that librarians are trusted gatekeepers to ensure that what’s on the shelf of a library has been curated and is appropriate,” Zwicker said.

These new state laws, several of which are titled the “Freedom to Read Act,” passed almost entirely along party lines, with unanimous Democratic support.

In New Jersey, Republican state Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia, who has worked in schools for the past 18 years, including as an English teacher, vehemently opposed the measure. She did not respond to an interview request.

“This isn’t puritanical parents saying, ‘Oh, I don’t want my child to learn how babies are made,’” during a September committee hearing. “That’s ridiculous, and we all know it.”

She added, “What I do want is for us to be able to have an honest conversation about some of what is in these texts that is extraordinarily inappropriate for that grade level.”

Enforcement and penalties

Legislation differs by state, including in enforcement and how to penalize noncompliant localities.

In Illinois, for example, school districts risk losing thousands of dollars in state grant funding if they violate the state’s new law discouraging book bans. But as the Chicago Tribune , that financial penalty was not enough to persuade many school districts throughout the state to comply, with administrators saying they are concerned about giving up local control on school decisions.

Several school districts in other states have similarly rebelled.

North of Minneapolis, St. Francis Area Schools’ board last month it would consult with conservative group BookLooks to determine which books it will buy for its school libraries. BookLooks uses a 0-through-5 that flags books for violent and sexual content.

Under its rating system, books that have long had a place in school libraries — such as the Holocaust memoir “Night” by Elie Wiesel or “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou — would require parental consent to read.

Asked about the school district potentially violating state law, school board member Amy Kelly, who led the drive to use BookLooks, declined to be interviewed. Karsten Anderson, superintendent of St. Francis Area Schools, also declined an interview request.

In Maryland, Carroll County schools the state in banning books in recent years, removing in the 2023-2024 school year at least 59 titles that were “sexually explicit,” according to a tally by PEN America.

Schools should not allow children to see “kink and porn,” wrote Hart, of Moms for Liberty. She got involved in the effort more than three years ago, saying she wanted to protect her five children and parents’ rights to make educational decisions.

She pointed to one book to make her point: “: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human,” a nonfiction book in graphic novel form by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan that seeks to educate teenagers about anatomy and consensual and safe sex. The book explores other issues of gender and sexuality, as well. Hart likened the book’s illustrations showing different ways of having sex to “erotica.”

“Parents who provide their children with alcohol or drugs, or to give them a tattoo would rightly be charged with crimes,” she wrote Stateline in an email. “Schools that provide children with sexually explicit content are negligent at best.”

The future of book bans

Around 8,000 of the more than 10,000 instances of banned books during the 2023-24 school year were in Florida and Iowa schools, according to PEN America. Lawmakers in those states enacted legislation in 2023 that created processes for school districts to remove books that have sexual content.

Iowa now that reading materials offered in schools be “age-appropriate,” while the Florida ensures that books challenged for depicting or describing “sexual conduct” be removed from shelves while the challenge is processed by the district.

Some of those banned books classics, such as “Roots” by Alex Haley and “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” by Betty Smith.

Over the past year, lawmakers in Idaho, Tennessee and Utah passed measures that ban certain reading materials that deal with sex or are otherwise deemed inappropriate, according to from EveryLibrary, an Illinois-based organization that advocates against book bans. Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs similar legislation in June.

Laws that allow for book bans have been the subject of in recent years, as plaintiffs argue those measures violate constitutional protections of free expression.

Late last month, a federal judge parts of a 2023 Arkansas law that threatened prison time for librarians who distribute “harmful” material to minors. Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, a Republican, announced the state would appeal the decision.

EveryLibrary is 26 bills in five states that lawmakers will consider this year that would target books with sexual and racial themes.

The organized effort to remove books because of LGBTQ+ or racial themes will continue, said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.

The association, which book bans as part of its mission to support libraries and information science, found that most of the around the country had LGBTQ+ protagonists.

“Librarians have always been all about providing individuals with access to the information they need, whether it’s for education, for enrichment, for understanding,” she said in an interview. “Censorship is diametrically opposed to that mission.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

During the 2023-2024 school year, Florida schools removed nearly twice as many books than the year before following challenges from parents and community members.

Schools removed 732 titles during the , on top of .

Twenty-three districts contributed to the list, with Clay, Indian River, and Volusia counties making up significant portions.

The removals stem from requiring school boards to adopt protocols for screening books deemed to be pornographic or contain sexual content.

Florida book removals have been the subject of lawsuits claiming censorship and limiting freedom of expression.

“There are no books banned in Florida, and sexually explicit materials do not belong in schools,” Florida Department of Education Communications Director Sydney Booker said in an email to the Phoenix. She added that of the more than 700 books on the list, some of the same titles have been counted in multiple districts.

The number of book challenges may have been too high in the eyes of legislators.

A law passed earlier this year, after the reporting period for the above data, could lower the number of challenges in the years to come. limits nonparents living in a school district to one book challenge per month.

PEN America report

Less than two weeks ago, of books that had been removed from Florida school libraries during the 2023-2024 school year.

By PEN America’s count, schools removed about 4,500 books from Florida libraries. The methodology between the freedom of expression advocacy organization and the state differs, though.

PEN’s list includes books temporarily removed while awaiting a final decision from the school board, and administrative removals, another method to take books off shelves.

The state’s count includes only books removed by school boards and does not include books removed pending challenges.

By PEN’s tally, Florida removed more books than any other state during the previous school year.

and several authors of removed books argues state definitions of “pornographic” and “describes sexual content” are unconstitutional and have resulted in censorship.

The publishers argue that “vagueness and ambiguity result in overbroad interpretations of [the law’s] prohibition on content that describes sexual conduct and chill protected speech.”

The Florida Department of Education stands by the limitations put on school libraries.

“Once again, far left activists are pushing the book ban hoax on Floridians,” Booker said. “The better question is why do these activists continue to fight to expose children to sexually explicit materials.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on and .

All but seven of the 56 books the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District removed from school libraries must be reshelved by next week, pending a trial next year, ruled U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason on Tuesday.

The banned books, including well-known titles like Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five” and Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner,” were removed from schools last year without individual consideration of their content after parents and community members complained of “LGBTQ themes” or sexually explicit content in district meetings.

Gleason’s order said the district’s action violated students’ constitutional rights and “raises the specter of official suppression of ideas.” That caused irreparable harm, and would continue to do so if they stayed off library shelves until trial, her order found. The order is a preliminary injunction; the books’ ultimate fate will be determined in a trial scheduled for April of next year.

The district released a statement on Thursday that said the order is in line with work the school board has undertaken in the last year, which includes reviewing the books and returning some to library shelves. “The Court’s decision directs the District to report on what it has already done including the reshelving of books as directed by the Board,” the statement said, in part.

Savannah Fletcher, the attorney for the plaintiffs with the Northern Justice Project, said the court’s ruling shows that the Constitution doesn’t allow the government to remove books without a compelling reason for an indefinite period of time.

“The Constitution doesn’t allow the government to remove ideas simply because some people disagree with them,” she said.

“I think it’s a really great reminder during this time of tension around our schools, around students rights and parents rights and the protection of teachers and educators, that there is a baseline we all have to follow, and our Constitution is going to protect that. It really reaffirms the rights of students to access ideas, to access information.”

The case comes against the backdrop of a about which books and what kind of material should be available to students. Fletcher said the Alaska case is unique because the district removed such a large quantity of books without individual review.

“This has never been written about by a court before. It is kind of a novel spin on it,” Fletcher said, adding that the lack of precedent presented a challenge when briefing the court.

Meanwhile, some books have already been approved to go back to library shelves by the community. After the district removed them, it established a library committee, a majority of whose members were selected by the school board. The committee was tasked with determining whether the books were “criminally indecent” and it allowed more than a dozen books to return to schools, according to court filings. Another 14 titles were referred to the district for a final decision; others were not reviewed or found to be out of circulation or missing entirely. The court’s decision overrides these determinations, unless the school administration or board provides the court with a compelling reason to remove a specific title.

Scott Adams and his wife Dawn were plaintiffs in the case with their middle school-aged daughter, who he said is an avid reader and fan of the Harry Potter series.

He said he joined the lawsuit because the family felt the district’s action was a violation of the First Amendment and he was “ecstatic” with Tuesday’s order.

“I took an oath when I joined the military over 30 years ago. And the oath — to support and defend the Constitution — doesn’t end when you leave the military,” he said.

He said he wants to see a better process for deciding which books should be in the library, and said teachers and librarians should be trusted with those decisions.

The seven books that will remain off the shelves for indecency in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough school district are “Call Me by Your Name,” “Verity,” “It Ends with Us,” “Ugly Love,” “A Court of Mist and Fury,” “A Court of Silver Flames” and “You” Their removal will be reviewed with the others in the trial next year.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com. Follow Alaska Beacon on and .

This story was updated on May 28 at 5 p.m.

Patrick Keefe says he just wanted to teach Toni Morrison’s “Beloved.”

The high school English teacher has long included the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about slavery in his curriculum at Litchfield’s Campbell High School. And in the past, he had questioned students about whether Morrison’s themes about the legacy of slavery applied to the present.

But after a state law passed in 2021 that regulated how teachers may talk about race and other concepts to students, Keefe became more cautious, he testified in a deposition last year. Any student-led discussion about structural racism might lead to a complaint under the new law, and might cause Keefe to lose his teaching license, he feared.

On Tuesday, a federal judge cited Keefe and other teachers’ examples in an order striking down the law, siding with teachers unions and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire and ruling that the law is unconstitutionally vague.

In , Judge Paul Barbadoro held that the law, known by opponents as the “divisive concepts” or “banned concepts” law, violated teachers’ 14th Amendment rights because it is too vague for them to follow.

“The Amendments are viewpoint-based restrictions on speech that do not provide either fair warning to educators of what they prohibit or sufficient standards for law enforcement to prevent arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement,” Barbadoro wrote, referring to the statutory changes passed by the law.

The law prohibits K-12 public school staff from any instruction that advocates for four concepts: that a person of any race, gender, sexual orientation, or other characteristic is inherently “superior” to another; that any individual is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive against another for any characteristic; that an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment for any characteristic; and that people of one characteristic “cannot and should not attempt to treat others without regard to” one of their characteristics.

The characteristics covered by the law are a person’s “age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, creed, color, marital status, familial status, mental or physical disability, religion, or national origin.”

The law, which was in part modeled after an executive order by President Donald Trump that applied to federal employees and was repealed by President Joe Biden, was presented by Republican lawmakers as an anti-discrimination statute meant to ensure that all students were treated equally. It came as Republican lawmakers raised concerns about diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts implemented in public schools, and argued that teachers were espousing “critical race theory” in classrooms.

The law allowed parents to bring complaints to the state’s Commission for Human Rights against teachers and school staff who they believed violated the new anti-discrimination statute. And it gave the State Board of Education the power to revoke educators’ teaching licenses if they were found by the commission to be in violation.

But teachers unions and others raised concerns that the prohibited concepts were too unclear to follow and would result in educators self-censoring instruction around certain topics such as race or gender for fear of losing their teaching credentials.

In his order Tuesday, Barbadoro sided with the state’s two teachers unions – the National Education Association of New Hampshire (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers of New Hampshire (AFT) – who had argued that the law violated their 14th Amendment rights because it did not provide clear guidance of what teachers should or shouldn’t teach.

Barbadoro’s ruling grants “declaratory relief” to plaintiffs, meaning he is ruling that the law is unconstitutional, but it does not grant “injunctive relief” – a stricter ruling that would have stopped the state from carrying out the law. In his order, Barbadoro wrote that he didn’t believe he needed the latter relief because he believed the state would respect the ruling and stop enforcing the law.

The ruling was a setback for the state, which had argued that the Attorney General’s Office had given teachers sufficient guidance in a “Frequently Asked Questions” released in 2021 that outlined scenarios in which teachers would violate or not violate the law.

There are no known cases of New Hampshire teachers who have been found by the Commission for Human Rights to have violated the law.

But Barbadoro said there were a number of scenarios that the FAQs did not address. One such unanswered question centered on Keefe’s attempts to teach “Beloved.”&˛Ô˛ú˛őąč;

According to his deposition, Keefe had asked for clarity from his school’s administration but “was told there was none available other than the Attorney General’s Frequently Asked Questions,” Barbadoro noted.

Barbadoro also noted the example of Jennifer Given, a former high school social studies teacher at the Hollis Brookline High School who “felt the need to significantly modify her teaching methods ‘out of fear that [she] would be accused of’ violating the Amendments, regardless of whether she was actually doing so.”

And he argued that the uncertainty applied to extracurricular activities as well, citing the testimony of Ryan Richman, a high school history teacher at Timberlane Regional High School. Richman said as a faculty adviser for the school’s Model United Nations team, he felt the law hampered his ability to help students for their competition in fear of saying something that might be seen as a violation.

Barbadoro used the examples to bolster his larger conclusion.

“The Amendments are vague not because they subject teachers to severe professional sanctions, but because they fail to provide teachers with sufficient notice of what is prohibited and raise the specter of arbitrary and discretionary enforcement,” he ruled.

He also said that the vagueness would allow state officials to apply their own arbitrary interpretations to enforcement.

“… Because the Amendments fail to establish ‘minimal guidelines to govern [their] enforcement,’ officials are free to ‘pursue their personal predilections’ when applying the law,” Barbadoro wrote.

The decision was hailed by the plaintiffs; Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, called it “a victory for academic freedom and an inclusive education for all New Hampshire students.”

“New Hampshire’s ‘banned concepts’ law stifled New Hampshire teachers’ efforts to provide a true and honest education,” agreed NEA-NH President Megan Tuttle in a statement. “Students, families, and educators should rejoice over this court ruling which restores the teaching of truth and the right to learn for all Granite State students.”

And it was cheered on by Democrats, including the two lead Democratic candidates for governor. Former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig praised the plaintiffs who “fought this unconstitutional law.” In her own statement, Executive Councilor Cinde Warmington said, “Teachers should be free to teach – the truth – and students should be free to learn.”

Republicans said they would redouble efforts to pass the bill. In a statement, former state Senate President Chuck Morse, a Republican candidate for governor who had helped push for the law in the Senate, said he was “deeply disappointed” in the decision but vowed to press on.

“As Governor, I will work tirelessly with lawmakers, educators, and community leaders to draft and pass a stronger bill that addresses the court’s concerns while keeping our fundamental goal intact: to prevent the dissemination of any materials that promote racial superiority or inferiority,” Morse said.

In a post on X, State Rep. Keith Ammon, a New Boston Republican, wrote: “Judge Barbadoro just put stopping Critical Race Theory back on the ballot in November.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Dana Wormald for questions: info@newhampshirebulletin.com. Follow New Hampshire Bulletin on and .

Ignoring the advice of literary friends, bestselling children’s author Jerry Craft reads every email, every book review and every social media post about his work. Craft dutifully responds to each.

After thousands of such interactions, the award-winning author — he won the prestigious Newberry Medal in 2020 — of the popular graphic novel “New Kid” doesn’t recall a single parent or teacher complaint about his work upsetting a child.

Instead, Craft told NC Newsline this week, that he more often hears from educators that his novels inspire nonreaders to pick up a book. Students have surprised teachers by asking them to read his work so they can discuss it with them later, he said.

Teachers grow emotional sharing stories about students who suddenly become avid readers after being introduced to his work, Craft said.

“These teachers have tears in their eyes and can’t make it through the story because they’re like, this is a kid who has never read and now he’s giving me reading homework,” Craft said. “We end up in one of these Dr. Phil moments, crying and hugging each other.”

Nonetheless, Craft’s coming of age novel about Jordan Banks, a Black student growing up in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood who transfers to a predominately white private school, has been the subject of attempted book bans after school districts received complaints that it contains elements of critical race theory.

The first complaint surfaced in Katy, Texas, in 2021. The book was pulled from library shelves after a parent complained it contained harmful content. A committee found no inappropriate content and reinstated “New Kid” after a 10-day review.

“There is no critical race theory [in my book],” Craft insists. “When I first heard that I was promoting critical race theory, I had to Google that because I had never heard the term before.”

Critical race theory is an academic discipline that examines how American racism has shaped law and public policy. It emerged in the legal academy in the 1980s as an offshoot of critical legal studies.

Critics say they fear it will be used to teach young, impressionable students that America and white people are inherently and irredeemably racist. They often share stories about young white children who, after learning hard truths about American racism, return from school stung by the revelation that, historically, the nation has been imperfect in its treatment of Black people and other people of color.

Craft is a keynote speaker for the “Color of Education Summit” being held at Raleigh’s McKimmon Center on Saturday. Lisa D. Delpit, a nationally and internationally known speaker and writer whose work focuses on the education of children of color and teachers of color, is also a keynote speaker.

Craft’s visit to Raleigh comes on the heels of which shines a light on current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools. The American Library Association (ALA) has reported 695 attempts to censor library materials and services and documented challenges to 1,915 unique titles between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31 of this year. Most of the challenges were to books written by or about a person of color or a member of the LGBTQIA+ community.

ALA documented 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022, the highest number since it began compiling censorship data more than 20 years ago. Censors targeted a record 2,571 unique titles in those demands.

In North Carolina, the ALA found 32 attempts to restrict access to books in 2022 that targeted 167 titles. The most challenged title was John Green’s “Looking for Alaska.” Critics complain the coming-of-age novel contains sexually explicit encounters and LGBTQIA+ content.

“This is a dangerous time for readers and the public servants who provide access to reading materials,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, ALA’s director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom,” said in a statement to kick off Banned Books Week. “Readers, particularly students, are losing access to critical information, and librarians and teachers are under attack for doing their jobs.”

Craft was “stunned” to learn “New Kid,” which is loosely based on the experiences of Craft and his two sons, was under attack in Texas. His books contain no cursing or sex, which are often triggers for book challenges.

“A parent definitely has the right to control what they want their kid to read, but that does not give them the right to control what everyone else’s child reads,” Craft said. “It’s like, if I raised my kid to be a vegetarian, that doesn’t mean you should be able to come and slap a hamburger out of his hand.”

Craft noted that much of the conflict in “New Kid” is between Black children. Black students who attend predominately white schools like the protagonist in “New Kid” often are uncomfortable at those schools as well as in their Black neighborhoods. They are accused of talking and acting “white” by Black friends and never fully accepted by white students at school.

“I really wanted to show what a kid like me has to deal with, in addition to school — it was not just algebra and geometry — it was leaving my predominately Black neighborhood every day, going to a predominately white school,” Craft said.

One parent did express concern about Craft’s use of “Oreo” in a book as a descriptor for a Black character. It’s pejoratively used by Blacks to describe a person who they see as Black on the outside but white on the inside, like an Oreo cookie.

“She didn’t want her kids to know about that term,” Craft said. “It’s better that he learns about it from me as opposed to waiting until he gets called that and have no idea what it means.”

Books such as “New Kid,” Kwame Alexander’s “The Crossover” and Eric Velasquez’ “Octopus Stew” can help heal America’s lingering racial wounds, Craft believes, by exposing children to people who are different from themselves.

“Those kids don’t grow up to hate us,” Craft said. “They don’t grow up to shoot up a Black church because they have been taught all of their life that we’re the enemy.”

Children must learn about America’s racist past for healing to take place, Craft said. If children such as Ruby Bridges and other Black students who stared racism down without blinking to integrate America’s public schools, then white children should be able to learn about their bravery in social studies classes without feeling any discomfort.

“Generally speaking, kids don’t look at it from a Black and white perspective,” Craft said. â€œKids look at it as right or wrong, heroes or villains. So, if your kid identifies with one of the villains in a book, you might have dropped the ball as a parent.”

Craft finds the news from teachers that his work encourages students to read particularly gratifying. As a budding artist growing up in Harlem, Craft hated to read anything except Marvel Comics. The comic books were not popular among teachers, however.

“They hated us reading comics because they thought they would rot our little brains,” he said. “They thought they were saving us by taking comics away from us, and I guess in their minds, they thought that if they took away Spider Man that we would gravitate to Shakespeare, and that didn’t happen.”

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