SPANISH SPRINGS, Nev. — Eight books that have been challenged for either removal or reclassification at the Washoe County Library System will stay on the shelves, the library board decided at a meeting last Wednesday.
The board voted four-to-one to reject the challenges, with board Chair Gianna Jacks as the single vote in favor of removing or relocating the books.
The books were challenged by a group of residents who claim the books are sexual, obscene and inappropriate for children.
But the Washoe County Library Board, with the exception of Jacks, disagreed with these claims in its review of the books.
“When you look at the books, its a chaste romance, a first crush of high school students. There was nothing sexually explicit. It was just the fact that it was two boys who had a crush on each other that some community members deemed it as sexually explicit,” Collection Development Manager for the Washoe County Library System Debi Stears said.
Seven of the eight challenged books have LGBTQ+ storylines, but the group of challengers insists that is not why they want to see the books removed.
We’re not challenging LGBTQ content. We’re not targeting anyone’s sexual orientations,” Sandee Tibbett, one of the challengers, said at the meeting.
According to Stears, parents do have the ability to choose what their children can and cannot check out at the Washoe County Library.
“They first can choose whether they want their child to have a library card. Some parents may just want one card for the family, where the parent holds onto it and does all of the checking out for their own children. Some parents are comfortable with their kids choosing books, but they want to kind of preview before each of their kids reads those titles,” Stears said.
The library board’s decision to reject the challenges comes after the group of challengers appealed an initial decision from the library director, which also rejected the challenges. The appeal to the board is the last level in the review process for challenged books at the Washoe County Library System, meaning that the eight challenged books will remain at the library unless another group challenges them and the library makes a different decision in response to any future challenges.