When Newton Free Library director Jill Mercurio opens the library’s website on Monday morning, she finds two different complaints in the requests form. 

The first is a complaint about the book titled Who Was Robert E. Lee that sits squished between other nonfiction books in the kids’ section. The other is a complaint about the upcoming “Rainbow Macrame” event, held for kids in grades 5-12 to make decorative rainbow textiles celebrating the LGBTQ+ community. 

“Our challenges here are challenges to figures who we’ve reconsidered our sensibilities on. Or we’ll get criticisms that we don’t have as many copies of conservative titles,” said Mercurio. 

A progressive, affluent, and highly educated city in Massachusetts, Newton currently finds itself dealing with an increase of book challenges coming from multiple different angles. The result? Nothing. 

Not yet, at least. When it comes to Newton, complaints about both “progressive” and “outdated” books haven’t resulted in any official challenges. “Even in the past it has not risen to the level of a formal challenge, but there have been requests to reconsider books,” said Newton South High School librarian Jeniffer Dimmick. 

While school libraries are at liberty to have books that exist outside the general school-wide curriculum, there are still certain demands they must oblige to. 

“Parents do have a say over what their children can read and access, and so if you’re under eighteen, they can contact us and say they don’t want their child to have access to a certain book,” said Dimmick. 

The process for doing so is simple: a parent will typically contact a school administrator, and then be put in touch directly with a librarian. “We’ll have a conversation with that person, help understand why they want it removed, and help them understand why we think that it’s a good fit for our library,” said Dimmick. “So far that has been enough for them.” 

Public libraries, on the other hand, operate much differently when it comes to choosing books and receiving challenges.

“As a public library we don’t have the same restrictions as a school library,” Mercurio said. “We have a responsibility to have everything.” 

To challenge a book at the Newton Free Library, one must fill out a “Request for Reconsideration of Library Materials” form online, which asks for extensive information about the book and the challenger. The request then goes from the library directors to the board of trustees until a final verdict is reached. 

“One of the things I think is most disturbing and fascinating about the challenges that libraries are facing is that many times people challenge a book in a library in a town they don’t live in,” Mercurio noted. “So you could have someone from Ohio fill out a challenge for a book in the Newton Free Library.” 

With the Washington Post uncovering that only eleven individual adults were responsible for the majority of book bans in 2022, it’s no surprise that those same people would target liberal towns like Newton.

Challenges from other states also reflect a much larger national trend. Over the past few years, traditionally conservative states have been banning books that deal with issues such as race, gender, and sexuality; according to PEN America, Texas currently has a total of 801 bans and Florida has 556. 

While Massachusetts has yet to have an official book ban, it’s had its fair share of challenges. “There is a level of intense activity we have not seen before,” said Massachusetts School Library president Jennifer Varney. “In Massachusetts, that’s really rare.” 

According to the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioner, the state had forty-five book challenges in 2022, which is more than in the years 2013-2021 combined. Not to mention, two of those forty-five challenges happened in Waltham, a town just fifteen minutes away from Newton.  

The books? This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson and Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe. As stated in the Massachusetts Informed Parents book list, This Book is Gay is a “sexual manual for LGBTQIA+ teens,” while Gender Queer promotes “LGBTQIA+ relationship[s] and gender ideology.” 

“It was stressful, and disheartening,” Waltham librarian Reba Tierney recalled. “Even though we had a policy, and followed it, there are so many things that the policy doesn’t cover from a personal and emotional point of view.” 

While parents are the force behind the book challenges, students are generally the ones fighting to keep books on shelves. “I feel that if we had a more concerted attack, that we could draw upon students,” said Dimmick. “The [Waltham] students were amazing. They got up there and they spoke so passionately and articulately about their need to have access to these books.” 

“I believe that a kid’s education is not at the liberty of government officials or outside officials,” said South senior Nora Linssen. Although students against book bans are vocal, parents and students in support of challenges and bans either refused an interview or had no comment. 

While most challenges at Newton South come in through the library, the school’s English department has also gotten pushback on its general curriculum over the last few years. 

“In Newton, there was a parent group that appealed to the school board to have a separate curriculum that would be run by a self-selected group of parents to check the curriculum,” said Newton South English teacher Jenny Robertson. “There’s a lot of code language around equity and excellence. There are parents who believe that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), dilutes the quality and excellence of our education.”

Just as the book challenges have not resulted in an official ban, the parent group hasn’t led anywhere significant either. 

“I think there’s fear sometimes that if we start including literature from all over the world rather than just the literary canon, that it’s going to take away from the knowledge of the canon,” said Robertson. “But in fact, we still teach works from the literary canon. We still teach The Catcher in the Rye, and The Odyssey, and Shakespeare like crazy.”

It’s still unclear whether the Newton South library or the Newton Free Library will ever have an official ban, or if the South English department will be barred from teaching certain books. If Waltham Public Schools serves as an example, it seems that any challenge put forth would quickly be shut down by students and educators.

“I think it’s all part of the bigger picture in this country of culture wars,” said Dimmick. “It’s just the latest bandwagon. And it just makes me so sad that libraries, of all institutions to attack, are being attacked.”