More books pulled from Florida classrooms after state pressure [View all]

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https://www.gazettextra.com/news/nation_world/more-books-pulled-from-florida-classrooms-after-state-pressure/article_31e99f8d-054b-54d0-b24e-215bdccb803d.html

More books pulled from Florida classrooms after state pressure



A fresh round of books — more than 600, by one estimate — have been taken out of circulation from Hillsborough County, Florida, classrooms after a letter from state officials ramped up pressure on school district officials.

Those books include Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid‘s Tale," Toni Morrison’s "Beloved" and Ari Folman’s "Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation."

In a letter last week, Attorney General James Uthmeier asked the Hillsborough County School Board for the “immediate removal” of materials he called “patently pornographic.”

His letter echoed one from Florida Board of Education Commissioner Manny Diaz on May 9. Diaz asked district Superintendent Van Ayres to tell the state board next month in Miami “why you continue to allow pornographic materials in your school libraries.”

In a letter responding to Uthmeier, school district attorney Jim Porter said that since 2022, Hillsborough County has removed 389,073 books from its collection of more than 2 million books, and will continue to “actively review” its collections.