GLEN RIDGE, N.J. (PIX11) — The decision to keep six books on the shelves of a public library in New Jersey will be made on Wednesday night after a small group of individuals in Glen Ridge submitted petitions to remove the materials in October.

LoriJeane Moody is a member of the opposing group, Glen Ridge United Against Book Bans.

“I believe that these books have been targeted specifically because issues of LGBTQ awareness make some people uncomfortable,” Moody said.

The six books also inform young adult readers of sex education and awareness. The titles are “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” “Here and Queer,” “This Book is Gay,” “It’s Not the Stork,” “It’s Perfectly Normal” and “You Know, Sex.”

The group who submitted the petition, Citizens Defending Education (CDE), posted on its website claiming that the books are inappropriate for minors because of sexually explicit content and attacks on people of faith. They also posted that what sparked the request for reconsideration was a mother visiting the library with her two children, ages 7 and 9, and seeing two of the books on display in the juvenile section, which she believed was inappropriate.

Library director Tina Marie Doody received their request for reconsideration in the fall.

“We have a process that we follow for that, so I reviewed their requests,” Doody said. “I submitted my decision to them, which was that I felt that the materials did meet our material selection policy and would remain in the library.”

CDE appealed that decision and it will now be heard by the library’s board of trustees in an open meeting.

“I think that not every book is for every individual, but these books belong and, in fact, need to be in our public library,” Moody said. “We are a diverse community and everyone needs to be seen in our library.”

The majority of the books were placed in the teen non-fiction section, but most of them were checked out by readers when PIX11 News visited the library on Wednesday.

“It’s unfortunate that a small group of people want to restrict what other individuals have access to,” Doody added. “I think that a public library’s job is to make materials available for everyone, and that is what I hope we continue to do here.”

PIX11 News reached out to CDE for comment on two separate occasions and has not heard back.
https://pix11.com/news/local-news/new-jersey/nj-library-board-to-decide-whether-to-ban-6-books/
pix11.com
CC-MAIN-2023-14
711244
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:SBG4KY2R7634MVVSSL5RDXAQHM5NYQKV
<urn:uuid:0a53229d-cea3-4c1c-8db4-36f3af98f896>
2023-03-27T10:53:37Z
192.0.66.128
text/html
sha1:4OL7X3QVSB7VB6YJ4SDADT7OWYLKCZHY
<urn:uuid:3410ed3c-c302-47a4-8a60-c99b4466362a>
https://pix11.com/news/local-news/new-jersey/nj-library-board-to-decide-whether-to-ban-6-books/
response
<urn:uuid:061a158d-3809-400e-afb3-1f7a1751c410>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2023-14
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for March/April 2023
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-202
software: Apache Nutch 1.19 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.4-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/