'A Light in The Attic' by Shel Silverstein Removed from Knox County Public School Libraries. This is a Shame.

by Rod Williams, Dec. 18, 2024 - Last week, the Williamson County School Board voted to remove three books from the school's libraries and restrict one to high school students and one to 11th and 12th grade students. One of the books removed was Where the Crawdads Sing. That book has sold over 18 million copies making it one of the best-selling books of all time. It spent over 150 weeks on The New York Times bestsellers list. I have read the book and last week I posted on this site my view of the work and why I thought it did not deserve to be removed. 

Where the Crawdads Sing is one of some 1100 books removed from school libraries in Tennessee recently.  In July 2022, a state law went into effect dubbed the “Age Appropriate Materials Act of 2022” which mandated that all materials in school libraries had to be “suitable for age and maturity levels of the students who may access the materials and must be suitable for, and consistent with, the educational mission of the school.” The law also provided a mechanism for removing books that were not deemed age appropriate. Since that law went into effect in Tennessee, over 1100 books have been removed from school libraries. Maybe a few of them were inappropriate, I don't know, but I suspect most did not deserve to be removed. 

One of the books removed from the Knox County School Library was the book Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein. I am well acquainted with that book. That book and another by the same author, Where the Sidewalk Ends, were books beloved by my daughter when she was a child. From about the age of 5 to about 8, I read to her from these two books a lot. They are clever, funny, and insightful. They are illustrated poetry books for children, but they are so clever that adults can enjoy them too.  

Both the text and the illustration of these two books are by Silverstein. Silverstein is a multitalented American writer, cartoonist, musician and grammy-winning song writer. You may know him as the writer of the Johnny Cash hit song, A Boy Named Sue. He also wrote a bunch of other country songs, several for Bobby Bare. 

I have such fond memories of reading those books to my daughter and so does she. Now, my five-year-old grandson enjoys the books. It is a shame that other children will be denied the joy of discovering these delightful books. 

Among other books removed from the Knox County Schools libraries is Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I read the book as a young adult. I don't remember much about it, but I remember it was a powerful book. The book is a serious anti-war novel. It deals with adult topics, but high school seniors are almost adults. While they can't buy alcohol, at age 18 they can vote, get married, drive a car, enter into contracts, must register for the draft, and can voluntarily join the military and die in real wars. We don't need to protect high school students from the complexity and reality of the world. They are not that fragile. We can't keep them kids. Let them read!

While I agree in theory that a school library should strive to stock its shelves with age-appropriate materials, I am concerned that we have set up a process for allowing the most puritanical and vocal to determine what books are in the library.

When I think back about my own childhood and education, I ask myself it I would have wanted by dad to have the power to determine what books were in the school library. The answer is a resounding "No."  I loved my father and he was a good man, but he thought all alcohol consumption was a sin and would have opposed any book that mentioned anyone having a mug of beer or a glass of wine. If dad would have been picking library books, any book in which a couple danced would have been banned. He believed the earth to be no more the 6,000 years old and he would have banned any book that denied the biblical creation story. If he would have gotten to pick the school library books, we would have had a small library. 

Moms for Liberty is the organization leading the effort to purge what they consider inappropriate books from school libraries. I have known some Moms members and have attended a couple of their meetings. I agree with them on some things. I agree when they resist normalizing and celebrating transgenderism and when they push back against critical race theory indoctrination. However, they are working to remove books from school libraries that do not deserve to be removed, and I do not trust their judgment. There needs to be pushback.

The most puritanical and vocal should not get to determine what books are in our public school libraries. 

A partial list of books removed from the Knox County Public School library system. 

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