“All Boys Aren’t Blue,” a book in the Oglethorpe County Library, is under review by the Athens Regional Library System after the Board of Commissioners raised concerns about the book’s content at its meeting earlier this month.
Controversy has surrounded the book “All Boys Aren’t Blue” since the Oglethorpe County Board of Commissioners’ meeting on April 2. Valerie Bell, director of the Athens Regional Library System, said the library is taking the concerns seriously.
“We have a process so that anyone can raise the idea of a book being taken, either removed from the library or moved to a different classification area,” Bell said. “It’s a process we’re proud of, and it’s the process we’re moving with.”
The book, by George M. Johnson, was the second-most challenged book in the U.S. in 2022, according to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.
Commissioner Jay Paul said during the commission meeting that the BOC might not provide the Oglethorpe County Library with the other half of its yearly budget until the book is removed.
“You know, it makes me sad, but everyone has a right to their opinion about what the book is,” Bell said. “We know how important this is to the board of commissioners, so we are going to try and expedite this particular book to move the process a little faster.”
Katherine Ratcliffe, branch manager of the Oglethorpe County Library, declined to comment.
The process begins with a patron filling out a “Request for Reconsideration form.” The form is sent to the library system’s main office, where a team of librarians read reviews and read the criteria for what the patron selected as their reason for the form.
“The most important piece of it is they actually read the book from cover to cover,” Bell said.
The team of librarians then make a recommendation on whether the book should be kept where it is, reclassified or removed from the library. The recommendation is made to the Book Action Committee, a subcommittee of the Board of Trustees.
The Book Action Committee takes its recommendation to the Oglethorpe County Board of Trustees after reading the book and the insights of the librarians, where the board votes on it.
Any appeal would be heard by the Athens Regional Board of Trustees, which consists of four representatives from Athens-Clarke County and three representatives from Franklin, Madison, Oconee and Oglethorpe counties.
Babs DeArmond, president of the Friends of the Oglethorpe Library, said in an emailed statement that she can’t speak for the entire organization, but that “we are opposed to any attempts to censor or remove books from the library.”
The Athens Regional Library System is implementing a middle-grade level book system in its libraries. It had already been established in the Oglethorpe County library.
The middle grade level books go from grades 6-8, but are still in the YA section, which are grades 9-12. They are labeled with stickers to indicate that they are middle grade books.
Athens Regional Library public information officer Darcy Calia said the library system doesn’t separate books based on what people might think is inappropriate.
“We’re just giving parents another resource,” she said. “If they want to decide that their child can only browse in the middle grade section, that’s up to the parents.”