Library Board Dismissed After Voting To Keep Picture Book About Trans Boy
The book in question: “Call Me Max,” is the story of a transgender boy who asks his teacher to call him by his chosen name.
Featured image: “Call Me Max,” book by Kyle Lukoff
In October, the Board of Trustees of a county library voted to keep a children’s book about a trans boy in the children’s section. As a result, the board has been summarily decimated by the North Carolina’s Randolph County Board of Commissioners, raising troubling questions around freedom of expression. The Commissioners made the decision following a public hearing last week to discuss the book; two hundred people attended and 40 individuals spoke during the public comment period.
“Dissolving a public library board because its members refused to remove a children’s book with a transgender character is a deeply troubling act of censorship,” Keisha Williams, Ph.D., Director of Communications with the ACLU of North Carolina tells GO. “Public libraries exist to serve entire communities, not to enforce ideological conformity or erase the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ people. When government officials retaliate against library boards for protecting access to information, they undermine core First Amendment principles and threaten everyone’s freedom to read, learn, and think for themselves.”
The Randolph County incident isn’t the first culture brawl over an LGBTQ-themed book in a library, but kicking out a board takes the book burning impulse to a whole new level. Though it wasn’t the first time.
Last year, Virginia’s all-Republican Warren County Board of Supervisors undertook a hostile takeover of the Samuels Public Library after it fought to keep LGBTQ-themed books in the collection. Under cover of darkness (at 2 a.m. to be precise), supervisors voted to create a new library board. Other tactics are being wielded too, namely use of money. In 2022, Jamestown Township, Michigan residents were upset over queer graphic novels and voted to gut library funding; in May of this year, five librarians quit in protest, resulting in the temporary closure of the Patmos Public Library. The list goes on.
So what’s the fuss about in Randolph County?
Call Me Max is the story of a cute little transgender boy in overalls and yellow sneakers who asks his teacher to call him by his chosen name rather than the name on the attendance sheet. According to the Washington Post, the book has been banned in three school districts — Carmel, Indiana; Palm Beach County, Florida; Stillwater, Minnesota — and nationally by the Defense Department in its military schools.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) brandished a page from the book before signing off on the “don’t say gay” bill in 2022.
image: Gov. Ron DeSantis (R)
As for Randolph County’s library, the conservative crisis got kicked off earlier this year, after someone requested that the book be removed, or placed higher up in the children’s section. While the library reviewed the complaint, they ultimately voted to deny the request. The decision prompted the County Board of Commissioners to step in, with the law on their side, to scrub the library board of trustees.
Call Me Max is written by YA author, Kyle Lukoff, who spoke with LGBTQ Reads in 2021 about his debut Middle Grade book, Too Bright to See. The conversation was telling, and cut to the motivation behind his quest to put meaningful stories out into the world for young people.
“I do like writing positive experiences of coming out, in some ways for idealistic reasons–showing kids, parents, siblings, etc. that it is possible, that you can respond with love and acceptance, and that there’s no earthly reason to do anything else,” Lukoff said.
