The book, In Our Mothers’ House (Philomel, 2009) by award-winning author Patricia Polacco, was relocated behind the desks of librarians in schools serving K-6 students in Utah’s Davis School District. The book is about three adopted children of differing ethnic backgrounds and their lesbian mothers.

Children in the district must present written parental permission to see the book, according to a 26-page complaint filed by the ACLU and the ACLU of Utah Foundation on November 13.

The Davis School District claims that the book violates Utah state laws banning support of homosexuality in instructional materials supplied by schools.

“[T]he District’s primary justification for removing the book from the shelves is that, by telling the story of children raised by same-sex parents, the book constitutes ‘advocacy of homosexuality,’ in purported violation of Utah’s sex-education laws,” according to the complaint.

The ACLU maintains that removing the book violates students’ first-amendment rights.

“The Supreme Court has been very clear that schools cannot remove books from the shelf simply because they disagree with their viewpoints,” Leslie Cooper, senior staff attorney at the ACLU LGBT Rights and AIDS Project, told SLJ. “This case is about students’ rights to books in the library.”

“This is not about instructional materials. It is a book on the library shelf,” Cooper said. “A book that depicts a family headed by a gay couple hardly advocates a gay family lifestyle.”

The ACLU is filing the proposed class-action suit on behalf of the two children of Davis School District mother Tina Weber, along with the other nearly 3,000 students in the district.

“I was shocked when I heard that a handful of parents had made a decision about whether everyone else’s kids could have access to this book,” Weber said, according to an ACLU press release. “Our job as parents is to make sure we teach our children about our values. We can do that without imposing our personal views on the rest of the school community.”

How the case evolved

The flap over the book started in January, when a kindergarten student at Utah’s Windridge Elementary School brought Polacco’s book home and the child’s parent objected to it. The parent filled out a form requesting that the book be removed from the library.

As recounted in a June SLJ article, the book was moved from the K-2 section to the 3-6 grade section following a January 27 meeting of the Windridge School Library Media Committee.

The parent, along with 25 others, then appealed to the District Library Media Committee, filling out complaint forms asking again that the book be removed. The group provided statements claiming that the book contains “propaganda, because it puts forth an idea, then makes it look attractive and normal” and that “the author is wanting us to accept homosexuality as a norm,” among other objections, according to the complaint.

On April 30, the District Library Media Committee voted to have the book put behind librarians’ desks in all district schools.

ACLU’s Cooper says, “The removal of the book was deferring to other parents’ decisions about what their children can read.”

According to a Salt Lake Tribune story published on June 1, school librarians were later being told to remove other books touching on gay and lesbian themes.

A web page on the Davis School District site states that “The Davis District Library Media Policies are undergoing review at this time.” A previous school library policy statement was recently removed from the site, according to the complaint.

Utah librarians respond

“It appeared to us that the Davis School District followed the procedures that they had in place,” said Shelly Ripplinger, president of the Utah Educational Library Media Association (UELMA). “As an organization, we support all school libraries having a selection policy and a reconsideration policy.”

“School libraries serve a different function than public libraries,” Ripplinger added. “Our purpose is to support the curriculum, so with our limited budget we have to focus on supporting the curriculum and leisure reading.”

Chris Williams, community relations director of the  Davis School District, was not available for comment at press time.

On November 14, the day after the lawsuit was filed, The Utah Library Association (ULA) posted a new  Statement on Intellectual Freedom on its website.

A video of parents reading Polacco’s book aloud at a Salt Lake City library appears on the ULA Intellectual Freedom Committee portion of the site. The video was created as part of the 2012 50 State Salute to Banned Books Week (September 30-October 6) organized by the American Library Association (ALA).

In Our Mothers’ House classifies as a banned book, said Wanda Mae Huffaker, ULA Intellectual Freedom Committee Chair. “Being placed behind the desk falls into the definition of being banned” because the book is “not accessible to everyone.”

“Few banned books stay banned,” Huffaker observed. “Most of the time librarians are able to get books back on the shelves. We librarians are good at what we do.”

Polacco, the author of more than 85 books for young people, explained in an October 5 article for the ACLU blog during Banned Books Week that she wrote In Our Mothers’ House after witnessing a fourth grade girl with lesbian parents and adopted siblings being told by an aide that “you don’t come from a real family.”

A committee of seven teachers, administrators, and parents from Utah’s Davis School District voted 6-1 to segregate In Our Mothers’ House (Philomel, 2009), described in an SLJ review as a “gem of a book” that illustrates how love makes a family, even if it’s not a traditional one.

“It’s still in the library, it’s just placed behind the counter,” says Chris Williams, a district spokesperson. “If a child hands in a permission slip they can still read it.”

The decision to restrict access to Polacco’s story-about a black girl who describes how her two Caucasian mothers, Marmee and Meema, adopted her, her Asian brother, and her red-headed sister-has raised concerns from the library community and anticensorship organizations, with the Utah Library Association (ULA) holding a meeting Monday afternoon to discuss the situation, says Anna Neatrour, ULA’s executive director.

While news reports have stated that other gay-themed books are being eyed for removal, including Justin Richardson’s and Peter Parnell’s And Tango Makes Three (S & S, 2005) and James Howe’s Totally Joe (Atheneum, 2007), Williams says the district hasn’t received any challenges against the titles, nor has it requested that other books be pulled. And Tango Makes Three topped the American Library Association’s Most Frequently Challenged Books in 2010.

“We haven’t asked librarians to put together a list, and we haven’t put together a list,” he explains.

The removal of In Our Mothers’ House from general circulation stemmed from a complaint in January by the mother of a kindergarten student who checked the book out from her school library and brought it home. In Our Mothers’ House was originally shelved in library’s K-2 section, says Williams, but following the complaint, a school committee moved the book to an area for 3rd to 6th graders.

The parent, however, wasn’t satisfied with that decision, adds Williams, so she and 24 others each filled out reconsideration of library materials forms-the minimum number of complaints needed for a district library committee to take up the matter. That group voted to relocate the book in all district elementary school libraries, and it will not reconsider returning the book to the general stacks for three years, explains Williams.

“In their mind, they looked at the age appropriateness of the book,” he says. “They didn’t look at [Polacco's] past works, and they didn’t look at content.”

Polacco, who has written dozens of children’s books, says her inspiration for the book came from a Texas girl who wanted to read an essay about her family and same-sex parents but was told by a teacher that she couldn’t because she wasn’t from “a real family.”

SLJ‘s review of the book reads, “The story serves as a model of inclusiveness for children who have same-sex parents, as well as for children who may have questions about a “different” family in their neighborhood. A lovely book that can help youngsters better understand their world.”

Interview requests with the Utah Educational Library Media Association, which represents a portion of school librarians in the state, were not granted by press time.