What is inappropriate for a school library?

[Erin1975]

A librarian was investigated for stocking inappropriate books in a school library. The safeguarding concerns were eventually investigated and upheld. But the list of books deemed inappropriate is laughable. It includes Twilight, Game of Thrones, amongst others. The book that apparently kicked the whole thing off was Laura Bates' "Men Who Hate Women".

www.indexoncensorship.org/2026/03/school-book-banning-escalates-in-the-uk-as-greater-manchester-secondary-school-censors-scores-of-books/

This was not in America this was Manchester.

Having looked at that list it is utterly ridiculous.

several of the books on there are either classics which are taught to students aged 11-16 (eg 1984) or are strongly recommended eg why I’m not talking to white people about race.

having read the article I suspect this is one deputy head/associate head who has got in way over his/her head and the school don’t want to be named because their boss is fully aware this is completely indefensible and they’ll get full on media and social media hate.

I feel extremely sorry for the librarian in question as the school clearly pushed the safeguarding allegation through which is also ridiculous.

You understand this is a school library that they are talking about, where some of the children are 11 and 12?

School librarians get to decide and there are many places where they can (and should) find age ratings for books. Peters books, common sense media and there are loads of other sites that give trigger warnings.

someone else has mentioned grey areas, another has mentioned that some books are studied in school. I think people are missing the point that a library book goes home with the child where hopefully it is read, most likely alone. A book they are studying is read in class with a teacher who will guide the kids through any difficult issues. For example the racist language used throughout Sawbones might be hurtful for some kids and the context might need to be explained.

I think some people still believe that a school librarian’s job is just sitting about reading books, using a date stamp and chasing up returns. There is so much more to the profession and we have a duty of care for the kids in our care for 6-7 hours a day.

Bhahaha meanwhile in my 00s girls grammar we were all reading the clan of the cave bear. Blimey that was an education.

I think maybe you didn’t quite see my point. I was responding to the poster who said ‘Books just need to be age appropriate’ as if that was a really easy thing to determine - my point was just there’s an awful lot of debate on what ‘age appropriate’ would be for a secondary school, and I suspect there are a lot of parents and plenty of teachers and indeed plenty of librarians who would vastly disagree on what’s age-appropriate.
And in a secondary school the age range is pretty broad anyway. I’m not offering a solution, just saying that it’s not as simple as ‘Oh, just make sure it’s age appropriate’ because in some schools, especially certain types of school, the librarian would be under pressure from the head or the governors to ditch anything that might have what TV announcers euphemistically call ‘adult themes’. ‘Age appropriate’ is such a vague and subjective term that it’s pretty much meaningless.

I’m certainly not criticising the skills of school librarians, not least because my own secondary school library was brilliant and the librarian was great. I borrowed mostly adult literary fiction from it for the duration of my time at school. I borrowed Nineteen Eighty-Four from my school library when I was 11 or 12, and at around the same age, Catch-22. I wasn’t that much older when I borrowed A Clockwork Orange. I’m really glad I had that opportunity. I know there are many people who wouldn’t consider any of those ‘age appropriate’ for an 11-year-old, but I think my enthusiasm for reading would have been greatly diminished if my school library had led me to believe I had to read the safest possible ‘age appropriate’ options.

This is a really interesting and important debate but I do think it’s important to point out (as someone much higher up the thread did) that there is only one source for this news story and it’s clearly a website with an agenda. I would put money on this being either completely untrue or heavily exaggerate (by the journalist, ‘Emily’ or both). Although that’s not to say it isn’t a really important conversation to be having!

Interesting question. Worth thinking: what are we worried about?

1. child goes looking for “inappropriate” material and finds it on purpose
2. child doesn’t go looking for “inappropriate” material and finds it by accident

If #1, the internet exists. If a child is curious about sex, or race, or any of the other things mentioned, I’d rather they found it in a book than on the internet.

#2 - I think it’s more about a system of warning the child what kind of content a book has. Not necessary cringey “trigger warnings” but it might be interesting to e.g. put the sixth formers in charge of some sort of content labels.

Most important is to make sure that every child is able to talk to a safe grownup about anything in a book that upsets them, no matter what that is. I still have books that upset me and I’m 35!

I would guess someone put the library catalogue into ChatGPt and asked it to identify all books with adult themes.

The one positive I have taken from this debacle is just how many Mumsnetters are former or current school Librarians.

I am as certain as I can be (it’s being widely talked about in Librarian circles, the Librarian in question is being supported by our professional body) that the story is true and I very much hope that the Librarian involved knows that the profession has her back.

Personally, I will be using this as a learning opportunity for my Year 9s and will be building on our ongoing discussions of book bans and censorship. I’ll probably get a few of the books off my shelves and wave them enthusiastically at my pupils in the ever-enduring hope that maybe just one of them will read something!

Thanks for this, that's interesting to hear.

I have also seen it referenced on LinkedIn by people I know who are involved in this area.

I hope those who have closer knowledge of this will excuse my initial scepticism – which was mainly bc of the clear agenda in the post and the fact that it doesn't seem to have been widely reported – both of which were red flags to me.

Wow. In 2000ish I was 12 and obsessed with Angela's Ashes/A boy Called It and all those child abuse trauma biographies that were popular around then. We all were! Tbf, I think we bought them rather than got them from the school library but no one batted an eye at it.

This is the problem for school librarians - whereas a large number of parents would buy a book for their child if asked, without necessarily knowing the content, you can guarantee that a certain number of the same parents would be up in arms if they became aware of the content in the same book borrowed from a school library. And the sensitivity of the child also comes into play - we had a complaint about one book being read in English lessons - while the rest of the class were queuing up to borrow it and see what would happen next.

better to have classics and young adult stuff. You don’t need porn or porn adjacent writing

But there’s a vast middle ground between ‘classics and young adult’ and ‘porn or porn adjacent’, so it would be crazy not to stock anything from that middle ground and restrict teenagers’ reading of adult novels solely to classics. That would exclude absolutely tons of contemporary literary fiction and high-quality genre fiction. I’m not saying school libraries should stock Fifty Shades Of Grey, but if they only stock kids’ books and classics, that would not be encouraging students to get enthused about books and reading.

I worked in a school which shared a campus with another school and the local library rather than having its own library.

The library rule was that 12 yr old children and above could read all the adult texts.

I admit that I made a 12 yr old boy return a Walking Dead graphic novel he'd borrowed. (If you haven't seen the graphic novels, they're much gorier and more explicit than the tv show.)

This was the novel where The Governor rapes a character and she then revenges herself by pinning him to a wooden floor and mutilating him - included the removal of his penis. Yes, I'd already read the novel myself which is why I knew what was in it.

I reckoned the boy could wait a few years before reading it. Possibly hypocritical of me, but I wouldn't have wanted a child of mine looking at those images at that age.

Have you read Michelle’s autobiography?

Have you read Michelle’s autobiography?

No. What is in it that's not appropriate for secondary aged children?

I wrote my university dissertation on this very issue. It worries me that it is rearing its head again. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it and all that...

I believe every decent library should have at least one book that deeply offends you on their shelf!

You can read practically any novel for English, it doesn't have to be on of the "classics".

Having novels teenagers are actually interested in makes it far more likely they will actually read them.

Do we have any citations for that article?

One of the issues of running a school library is you are basically on your own, with little or no support. You make the best decisions for your readership, then when things go pear shaped, you’re the scapegoat. This poor woman 😢

There's a post about this on the school Library Association 's page on Facebook now.

Facebook post.

Re Michelle Obama’s autobiography- I haven’t read it, however I’m away there are two versions, one that’s the normal one for everyone and a “teen reader” version- so I’m assuming there’s something in the adult version that’s a bit too adult and has been edited.

I've read it. Nothing edgy at all that I recall.

I think you’ve just proved the point. Unless you’ve read the book, you can’t possibly judge as to why it’s on the list 🤷‍♀️