Des Moines Register: “Banishing Captain Underpants: An Investigation of the 3,400 Books Pulled in Iowa”

From USA Today/Des Moines Register:

 …an exclusive Des Moines Register survey of Iowa’s 325 public school districts found that some schools pulled dozens – even hundreds – of books under the law before a federal judge issued an injunction last December after Butler Abry and other teachers, families and publishers sued.

But an exclusive Des Moines Register survey of Iowa’s 325 public school districts found that some schools pulled dozens – even hundreds – of books under the law before a federal judge issued an injunction last December after Butler Abry and other teachers, families and publishers sued.

The Register’s reporting also shows several schools returned their pulled books to the shelves after the injunction.

Other districts – more than half – didn’t remove books, including the Mount Vernon Community School District and Des Moines Public Schools. Several cited the injunction for their decision.

Even so, the Register’s exclusive data shows districts removed nearly 3,400 books and two DVDs to comply with the law, including nearly 1,000 unique titles.

The data also exposes the breadth of pulled books, including the American classic “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, the Newbery Medal novel “The Giver” by Lois Lowry and “Captain Underpants and the Sensational Saga of Sir Stinks-A-Lot,” a popular children’s book with an LGBTQ+ character, by Dav Pilkey.

Read the Complete Article (about 2400 words)

See Also: John Green, Toni Morrison, Jodi Picoult, Colleen Hoover among most banned authors in Iowa (via USA Today)

See Also: ‘Nineteen Minutes,’ ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ ‘Crank’ among the 10 most banned books in Iowa (via DMR)

UPDATE (June 9): How the Des Moines Register has tracked banned books at Iowa’s public schools (via DMR)

UPDATE (June 6): Nearly 3,400 Books Were Banned In Iowa (via PEN America)

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