Annabelle Jenkins walked onto the stage during her graduation ceremony from the Idaho Fine Arts Academy in the West Ada School District with a book tucked into her sleeve.
When she stood before West Ada Superintendent Derek Bub, she slipped out the book — the graphic novel of “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood and Renee Nault — faced the audience and smiled, and handed it toward Bub. It was one of 10 books the West Ada School District had removed from libraries earlier in the school year.
Bub did not take the book. Jenkins dropped it at his feet and walked off the stage without shaking his hand.
A TikTok video she posted of the incident that night garnered over 24 million views and more than 15,000 comments.
Schools have libraries, and those libraries are naturally segmented by age because of being attached to a specific school (elementary, middle, high). Kids have to know the book is there and seek it out, so that puts an additional buffer.
Books are also delivered via the classroom. Teachers, of course, exercise judgement there on what is age appropriate, both for content and for reading level. The bar should be higher there because students have little to no choice on the book.
Yes, in the article they mentioned not being able to segment by age at this school. If I understand correctly, high schoolers start around 14 so there is a balancing act required because the liabilities differ from those of libraries.
I find the school’s claim to be a lazy cop-out. My child’s school is K-12, and I recently had to go through a whole paperwork process to give my 3rd grader permission to check out middle school level books.