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Texas independent school district bans Neil Gaiman and 'A Song of Ice and Fire' books

According to PEN America, Texas is the state that has banned the most books in school libraries. To avoid this, several congressmen are proposing to create an age-rating system.

Public Library

(Wikimedia)

Published by
Rosana Rábago Sainz

The Frisco Independent School District in Texas published a list of banned or restricted books in school libraries. Among those banned were novels such as Neil Gaiman's American Gods and George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones, which came as a surprise to some of the authors whose books were affected.

It's not the only Gaiman novel to be banned in the Frisco Independent School District. Anansi Boysand The Ocean at The End of the Lane also made the list for being a book "intended for adults." The same happened to the A Song of Ice and Fire saga, the novels which the Game of Thrones series was based on, which were also removed from schools.

Not only were novels affected, but some comics were also banned. Four volumes of Monstress, by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda, were classified as inappropriate for schools for "obscene content." The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien, may only be read by students in sixth grade and above. They are all part of the list of 307 books that must be removed from Frisco's school libraries.

GOP representatives propose state law to regulate books in school libraries

In response, several GOP members of the Texas House of Representatives this week proposed to implement a new state law. The proposal, written by Tom Oliverson, aims to implement a state-mandated age-rating system.

This system would require publishers to establish specific age ratings which would have to be placed on the cover of all books sold to school districts in Texas. Not only that, state agencies could order these publishers to modify any of the ratings they choose and, if they do not comply, they would lose the right to sell at the school level.

Texas continues to increase the number of books banned in schools and maintains its position as the state with the most banned books, according to a report published by PEN America. However, this same organization does not consider that this law will benefit schools, but that it will mean a "dangerous escalation,” as they stated in a press release:

This is a dangerous escalation in the movement to censor public education. In a very short time, those who advocate for school censorship have gone from trying to control what can be studied and read to trying to control the decisions by private companies about what to publish in the first place.
A ratings system like that proposed in this bill would concentrate unprecedented power in the hands of government officials to dictate the bounds of what all students and families can read, learn, and share–in ways that are deeply undemocratic.
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