‘All Boys Aren’t Blue’ might be moved or removed from library
The Oglethorpe Echo
The Oglethorpe County Library Board of Trustees will meet at 4 p.m. Thursday, May 23 to decide what to do with a controversial book.
The board’s Book Action Committee has suggested the book “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson be moved from the young adult section of the Oglethorpe County Library to the adult section, Board of Trustees Chair Mike Garner said.
The Board of Trustees will hear the recommendation, then vote to accept or reject it.
If the board votes to reject the recommendation, it may still vote to remove the book from the Oglethorpe County Library entirely. The board could also vote to keep the book in the young adult section.
The meeting will be held at the Oglethorpe County Library.
Garner said the board has received at least seven official “requests for reconsideration” for the book, the second-most challenged book in the U.S. in 2022, according to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.
“These are the first (requests for reconsideration) we’ve received, to my knowledge,” he said. “Everybody I’ve talked to that’s been on the board before me says that they’ve never received one of these before. This is a first for us.”
In a summary on the library’s online catalog, the publisher calls the book a memoir that “weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys.”
Several public officials, including Oglethorpe County Board of Commission Chairman Jay Paul, spoke out about the book at the BOC meeting in April.
“It’s pornography. They can take it out on their own, or we’ll get it taken out and pulled out,” Paul said at that meeting.
Paul also said at the meeting the BOC may withhold the $42,000 allocated to the library due on July 1 if the book isn’t removed.
Garner said there has been public comment supporting and opposing the removal of the book at the past two Oglethorpe County Library Board of Trustees meetings.
If anyone who filed a request for reconsideration disagrees with the Oglethorpe County Library Board of Trustees’ decision, they can file an appeal with the Athens Regional Library Board of Trustees.
That board includes Garner and fellow Oglethorpe Board of Trustees member Mary Frey, as well as representatives from the Athens-Clarke, Franklin, Madison and Oconee County Libraries’ Boards of Trustees.