In Tennessee, Monroe County Schools have yanked more than 574 books from their libraries. While book bannings are becoming a disturbing trend in the U.S., most are pulled for things like violence or sexuality. However, this crop of forbidden books included several about cats and dogs.
These titles include the salacious “The Complete Book of Cats” and “The New Encyclopedia of the Cat.” And let’s not forget their also banned canine counterpart, “The Complete Book of Dogs.”
Banning Cats
Supposedly, all of these books were removed to comply with recent changes to Tennessee’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act. According to Xan Lasko, the Intellectual Freedom Chair for the Tennessee Association of School Librarians and a retired librarian, it allows the state to pull materials that contain nudity, sexual excitement, sexual conduct, and excess violence. It also doesn’t allow any judgment based on the context in which these situations are presented in these books.
There is even an addendum to allow removing material that “is not appropriate for the age or maturity level of a student in any of the grades kindergarten through twelve (K-12).” All of these factors just make the banning of “The Complete Book of Dogs” even more confusing. Monroe County school administrators have declined to comment on the bans beyond saying they are complying with the law.
The Law Vs Lit
Alarmingly, Tennessee isn’t the only state pulling books about cats and dogs. School districts in Iowa and Florida have also banned books about these common household pets, along with other animals. Those states went beyond just informational literature and pulled several fiction titles that are intended for children. Both have banned “Bathe the Cat,” about a family trying to get through their to-do list. Why? Because two dads are shown. Clay County, Florida, banned “Every Dog in the Neighborhood,” following a boy trying to count every dog in the neighborhood to convince his grandma to let him get one.
Given how open-ended the wording of these laws are, it leaves school districts to make their own calls. For example, Tennessee is supposed to have a formal process for challenging books. However, once these laws went into effect, many libraries were culled ahead of time.
These cat and dog books may have been pulled because some Tennessee districts used keyword searches like “sexual reproduction” to look for titles. Some schools are using AI to make these lists, creating even less oversight and nuance in banned titles. Since AI programs can’t tell a copy of “Grey’s Anatomy” from an issue of “Hustler” in regards to nudity. This is, again, why context is so important.
Much of this overculling could also be due to fear of becoming a target if they are caught with an “offensive” title. It’s not uncommon for librarians, who normally aren’t in charge of deciding what is banned, to receive real threats due to these books being on the shelves. “They’re scared, and they’re concerned for their jobs,” says Lasko.
We’ll keep you posted on this regressive wave of book bannings as they continue to happen.
