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A young adult novel about a gay wizard was removed from a Henrico County Public Schools library following a parent’s formal complaint about the book’s sexual content.
I’m a Gay Wizard was formally challenged less than two weeks after the novel Out of Darkness was challenged and removed from HCPS libraries.
The complainant objected to the “very graphic detail” of a boy in the book performing oral sex on another boy character, according to a form submitted to the school division.
“I find this kind of prose to be literary pornography, which should absolutely not be made available to youth in a public school,” the complainant wrote. “It could drive premature sexualization of that student and possibly contribute to the development of a pornography addiction.”
The complainant’s name and school were redacted from the form, which was obtained by the Citizen through a public records request. However some verbiage written by the complainant indicates that he or she is a parent.
The complainant met with the principal Nov. 1, a few days after news coverage of the removal of Out of Darkness. The formal request for review was submitted Nov. 8, according to the document.
HCPS’s Instructional Materials Review Committee met last week to discuss Out of Darkness, a novel about an interracial teenage romance that also was targeted for its sexual content. The book’s author, Ashley Hope Perez, told the Citizen in October that the removal is representative of recent nationwide efforts to purge school libraries of books that discuss race or center LGBTQ characters.
The eight copies of Out of Darkness were pulled from HCPS libraries after a woman spoke at a Henrico School Board meeting and read a graphic excerpt from the novel describing a sexual interaction between a teenage girl and an adult man.
However, the woman who spoke at the meeting is not the one who filed the request for review. The request was initiated by the HCPS division leadership team and HCPS Chief Learning Officer Lesley Hughes, according to the form.
“As the chief learning officer, it is within Dr. Hughes’s purview to request a review of instructional materials, either formally or informally, as part of her supervision of the Division of Learning,” said HCPS spokeswoman Eileen Cox. “Dr. Hughes is not a complainant challenging the book. She was asking for a review in her role as the chief learning officer.”
Members of the Instructional Materials Review Committee met last week to discuss Out of Darknes. The meeting was not open to the public.
IMRC members are now preparing a recommendation for Superintendent Amy Cashwell, who will then present the report to the Henrico School Board. As of Tuesday, Cashwell had not received the report.
In February, the IMRC will meet again to discuss I’m a Gay Wizard. The book’s author, V.S. Santoni, could not be reached for comment.
The committee has 41 members and changes every year, with members serving for three years. In general, the committee includes a school board member, the chief learning officer, directors of instruction, literacy specialists, parents, school administrators, librarians, and teachers.
The regulation regarding review of instructional materials in the HCPS policy manual does not include any language about what’s supposed to happen to the book while the review process is taking place.
The National Coalition Against Censorship advises school divisions to keep the challenged books on library shelves until the formal review has taken place. Pulling a book immediately esteems the opinion of the complainant over the professional decision making that went into selecting the book for the library, according to the NCAC.
The eight copies of Out of Darkness and one copy of I’m a Gay Wizard are absent from HCPS high school libraries while the review process takes place.
School book challenges in Virginia and across the U.S. increased late last year, and were a hot topic of the Virginia gubernatorial race. Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who was inaugurated Saturday, centered his campaign on education, promising to give parents more control over their children’s education.
Nora Pelizarri of NCAC said that book challenges nationwide have escalated since Youngkin was elected governor in November.
“I think that the governor's race and the national attention that it got, and the strong focus on books in schools as this political football that was used in that race, added a lot of fuel to the fire,” Pelizarri said. “[It] emboldened a lot of people around the country to get even louder in their challenges to books.”
Out of Darkness and I’m a Gay Wizard were challenged in HCPS within the same two weeks. Before these two novels were challenged, HCPS had not conducted the review process since 2011.
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Anna Bryson is the Henrico Citizen’s education reporter and a Report for America corps member. Make a tax-deductible donation to support her work, and RFA will match it dollar for dollar
