Wisconsin School Libraries Navigate Rise in Book Challenges

Frederica Freyberg:
In education news, Saturday marks the end of National Library Week dedicated to getting young readers into the local libraries. But at the same time, Wisconsin schools and libraries have had to deal with more book challenges and bans than ever before, more than doubling in 2023. “Here & Now” reporter Nathan Denzin has more.

Monica Treptow:
I would say our school librarians are under a lot of stress.

Jill Underly:
And it’s this culture war of control, right?

Dan Kiel:
I think there was 280 some books in the high school that were being challenged.

Rebecca Blom:
Even nonreaders were coming up to me, like, “What is going on?”

Nathan Denzin:
Wisconsin has seen a huge rise in book challenges since about 2021.

Monica Treptow:
The inquiries are so strong that it actually has shifted the priorities of my position and made that one of the focus areas in support of our school librarians.

Nathan Denzin:
Monica Treptow is the Wisconsin Department of Instruction’s school library media consultant. She travels around the state helping educators understand the current environment of book challenges.

Monica Treptow:
There’s been book challenges for decades, right? That’s not a new thing. But it is new in that the techniques are different.

Nathan Denzin:
Those techniques are often spread on social media.

Jill Underly:
With social media, there’s a lot of misinformation that is spread. Misinformation is designed to stoke outrage.

Nathan Denzin:
Dr. Jill Underly is the state superintendent of public instruction. She says apps like Facebook or X have contributed to the increasing number of challenges. According to the American Library Association, the number of titles challenged hit a record high in 2023. In Wisconsin, there were 27 challenges aimed at hundreds of books. Treptow said that a typical book challenge used to be over a single book. A concerned parent would bring it to a librarian or educator. In contrast, recent challenges include long lists of books that have been sent straight to district administrators or school boards.

Jason Tadlock:
For the middle school is over 600 pages long and for the high school, I believe, it was over 1,400 pages long.

Dan Kiel:
You looked at it at first and went, “Oh my God.”

Ryan McBurney:
We knew immediately there was no way to actually read all of the books.

Nathan Denzin:
Jason Tadlock, Dan Kiel and Ryan McBurney work in the Elkhorn School District. Tadlock as superintendent. Kiel as the high school principal and McBurney as the middle school principal. In late 2023, Elkhorn fielded a challenge to a whopping 444 books. These two stacks represent about one-sixth of all of the books that were challenged in Elkhorn. District staff say it took months to sift through all of the material. Titles like “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck and “The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson were among the challenged material. As were books containing LGBTQ or race topics.

Dan Kiel:
It wasn’t just sex. It was drugs. It was abuse. It was, you know, any number of different topics.

Jason Tadlock:
The policy also required at that time and requires for those books to be pulled out of circulation until such a time a principal makes that judgment.

Nathan Denzin:
That caused about 160 books from middle school and about 280 books from the high school to get temporarily pulled from shelves. In order to get information about all 444 books, the parent had pulled reviews off of booklooks.org. The site was previously affiliated with Moms for Liberty, which is considered a far-right antigovernment organization by a group that tracks extremism in America.

Scarlett Johnson:
The message that parents don’t have privacy over their child’s education has been prevalent for years and for too long, we have stayed silent as out-of-touch administrators, school board members and even union leaders behaved as parents aren’t smart enough to choose what’s right for their own children.

Nathan Denzin:
Scarlett Johnson is one of the founders of the Moms for Liberty chapter in Wisconsin. She has used social media to speak out against numerous books all over the state since 2020. Johnson did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this story. However, in a sit-down with WXOW in La Crosse, she pushed back against what she calls indoctrination.

Scarlett Johnson:
We send kids to school to be educated, not indoctrinated, and also we don’t send them there for therapy.

Nathan Denzin:
In Madison, groups like the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property can be found protesting content in schools and libraries.

Jonathan Marine:
The literature that they’re promoting in the libraries, a lot of it is pornographic or obscene.

Nathan Denzin:
Jonathan Marine is a member of the American TFP, which is an anti-LGBTQ organization.

Jonathan Marine:
These things should not be allowed in libraries.

Jill Underly:
Of course, parents should have a say in what their kids are reading, but when we look at the challenges, it’s really a subset of people are dictating what it is that you can read and what your kids can read.

Nathan Denzin:
In Elkhorn, staff had to take on extra duties in order to check every book that was challenged.

Ryan McBurney:
Principals, librarians, administrative assistants, directors, just kind of an all hands-on deck to make sure that we’re getting, with the sheer volume of it, getting all that information together as much as possible.

Dan Kiel:
We try to do our best to get a consensus on where is this book — where should this book be rated age-wise.

Nathan Denzin:
To determine an appropriate age range, they used a combination of professional review sites to learn more about the content of each book. Ultimately, none of the books were banned because staff did not find any of the books to be objectionable. A handful of books were moved from the middle to the high school and another handful had a grade or age restriction applied. Despite the long hours, district staff said that there was one positive. They learned more about each book in their school’s library.

Dan Kiel:
It’s not bad for me to get into the library, see what’s actually there, what are people concerned with.

Nathan Denzin:
But they also said it was a distraction for some of the students.

Jason Tadlock:
I think that it was disruptive. I think it created a lot of angst among students and our parents.

Rebecca Blom:
It brought a lot of attention and a lot of questions.

Nathan Denzin:
Rebecca Blom is the library media specialist for the Elkhorn High School.

Rebecca Blom:
Believe it or not, some of the circulation went up a little bit because they’re like, “Oh, which books are on that list?”

Jason Tadlock:
We had a lot of feedback from parents that how dare an individual determine or try to determine for me what’s appropriate for my kid or not.

Rebecca Blom:
I would just say the more diverse selection we have in here, the more opportunity we have for these kids to really grow.

Jill Underly:
Libraries are places that are supposed to be safe. They’re supposed to be inclusive for everybody.

Monica Treptow:
In its core principle, there’s nothing wrong with a book challenge. But when it goes to these extremes and you’ve got raising — people raising concerns in very — either distant relationships to the school district or in mass amounts, then it turns into something that does threaten democracy.

Nathan Denzin:
Underly and Treptow say now is the time for districts around the state to review their book challenge policy.

Jill Underly:
Really important that our school districts look at their policies so that they can be prepared.

Nathan Denzin:
Tadlock also said the Elkhorn District is revising their challenge policy so a one parent can’t challenge a mass number of books.

Jason Tadlock:
It will require up to five community members and they’d like to have five individuals from different households would have to submit the challenge.

Nathan Denzin:
The policy will require the challenger to have read the book in full before submitting. The district also developed a form for parents that would give their student access to any restricted book.

Dan Kiel:
Parents can say my kid can read the restricted books and they’re open and accessible to all kids.

Rebecca Blom:
My argument for that is sometimes, depending on what the book is, then maybe put that in the parents’ hands and let them have those conversations with their kids.

Monica Treptow:
We want our libraries to be that inclusive space for all of our students to be able to find the resources that they need.

Ryan McBurney:
What we’re doing is keeping books in the hands of students so that they can support their learning.

Nathan Denzin:
For “Here & Now,” I’m Nathan Denzin in Elkhorn.