Local parents are drawing attention to explicit and political reading material available in North Carolina public schools after lawmakers passed legislation allowing parents to opt their children out of classroom activities and books assigned for reading on religious grounds.
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The law comes a few years after the legislature approved the Parents’ Bill of Rights that affirms parents’ ability to withhold consent for reproductive health lessons, inspect public school textbooks and other instructional materials, review records of their child’s borrowed library books and more.
But these provisions aren’t enough for some North Carolina parents who advocate for transparency around the library books available to school children.
Banning books or giving parents a voice?
Moms for Liberty is a national nonprofit that started in Florida in 2021 to educate families on their rights as parents of children in public schools, which focused on issues like masking during COVID-19 and reading material present in schools.
But its mission is controversial among some who say recent emphasis on “parental rights” is a misleading campaign to diminish First Amendment rights.
A study released by PEN America this month cautioned against the “normalization of book banning,” citing a growing number of book bans across the country beginning with 2,532 instances in 2021-22, booming to 10,046 instances in 2023-24 and most recently at 6,870 instances from 2024-25.
The Pavement Education Project is a local nonprofit organization raising awareness of books available across North Carolina schools that they believe to be inappropriate. PEP has a database of books they find problematic and their placement in schools across the state.
The organization’s website says it is not a book-banning effort — it only exists to allow the community to observe what’s available in schools so families can take action themselves.
Spokesperson Janet Peterson said the organization receives tips from parents and teachers who see books they believe are inappropriate. While many of the issues present in the books on PEP’s list involve explicit material — such as Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, which RatedBooks.org says contains sexual activities, bestiality commentary and derogatory terms — Peterson said they prefer the term “inappropriate books” because the content in question goes beyond the overtly obscene.
“We prefer to use the term ‘inappropriate content,’ because there is more than just explicit or obscene content that we consider objectionable, such as ideological concepts and messaging that run counter to traditional American values and principles,” Peterson wrote in a statement.
“We are now seeing evidence that the results are harmful, not only to children, but to their families and society as a whole,” Peterson asserted.
PEP’s website has a page dedicated to children’s books that contain content the organization considers “gender ideology,” such as Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope and Bye Bye Binary.
Though some of the books on the page include other themes such as “activism” in Being You: A First Conversation about Gender and “controversial racial and social commentary” in Antiracist Baby.
When PEP was founded during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Peterson said they initially focused on books that had obscene material, but quickly took issue with other themes like graphic violence, gender dysphoria and critical race theory.
“PEP questions ideologies unable to address basic queries like ‘What is a woman?’ or ‘How can someone be in the wrong body?’ Peterson said.
“Public education should respect diverse views on fundamental issues rather than assume one stance at the exclusion of all others. Additionally, students should not be reading books that present inaccurate conclusions and fail to provide credible citations to support its claims.”
Becky Lew-Hobbs is the chair of Wake County’s Moms for Liberty chapter. She told Carolina Public Press that while the issue of inappropriate books comes down to a parent’s right to know and choose what their child is exposed to, public schools are taxpayer-funded, thus the entire community should be invested in what is best for children.
“Taxpayers should have a say in what is being provided and what is not being provided,” Lew-Hobbs said.
“These schools have limited space. It’s just like an art museum. You don’t have every piece of art in the world. Just like any library, you have a set physical space. You cannot provide every single book. You have to curate it wisely and provide good quality literature, which there is lots of literature out there at the various grade levels.”
Nuanced alternatives
Not everyone in North Carolina agrees with the perspective of the Moms for Liberty activists and some suggest a more nuanced approach.
Kisha Daniels is an assistant professor of the practice of education at Duke University. She said that, of course, there are some books that are not developmentally appropriate for children to read.
But even if certain books are removed from schools, that doesn’t mean children won’t at some point be exposed to the same concepts in the world, and it’s important to have open conversations about it in an age-appropriate way.
“The developmental piece is important because it ties back to cognitively the way that children learn, and so it’s not helpful for kids to be exposed to certain material that cognitively they may not understand without additional context, without additional information,” she said.
“We still have to provide opportunities to talk to kids about what they’re reading, about what they’re seeing, about what they’re hearing. So again, it’s not like, ‘Oh, if you take the book off the shelves, kids are not going to see and or hear or have these experiences.’ They more than likely will, but parents, teachers, family members, whoever are in the kids innermost sphere have to be open to having the conversations with them so that developmentally, they can understand whatever they have questions about.”
Just as she wouldn’t expect a 5-year-old to understand high-level text about biology, Daniels wouldn’t expect them to understand one about identity.
Teaching a young child about identity should focus on their unique talents, their connection to their culture and ethnicity and their position within their family. As they become teenagers, learning about their identity means considering where they fit in, what issues they care about and what kind of person they want to be.
“It’s all about exploration at younger levels, and exploration means you have to be exposed to a lot of different types of people,” Daniels said.
“But as they age, as we get older, different theorists offer multiple perspectives on development, but open communication and exploration has to be at the core of students understanding who they are as people, and that’s really what identity speaks to.”
On the surface, book bans are seen as restrictive and a violation of the right to choose what one wants to read. But beyond that, book bans limit children’s and broader society’s exposure to a variety of perspectives and worldviews that allow for exploration, Daniels said.
When books are challenged, it tends to be on the premise of limiting children’s exposure to content or ideals the challenger disagrees with. But Daniels said just because someone is exposed to something, doesn’t mean they will adopt that identity or those beliefs.
In fact, the values children learn from their families are far more impactful on their development than the media they consume.
“A lot of the conversations around book bans lean into this idea that if kids read books, they will all of a sudden take on the character, or they’ll take on all of these different ideas that they’re seeing and hearing, and that’s not actually the case,” she said.
“Socialization is important, but one thing we know from development is the importance of parental relationships — with kids and social relationships are large as well, but it doesn’t take the place of parental relationships and conversations. So I think in so many ways, we’re giving these books far more power than they actually hold.”
Beyond a healthy parent-child relationship, there’s little else that is more important for a child’s education than being in a school environment where there are good relationships between parents and educators, Daniels said.
Regardless of the decisions parents or schools make, Daniels said there must be open communication between families and educators — and communication is a two-way street.
“It just doesn’t work well when families are not happy with schools and districts,” she said.
“Now, will it always be 100%? No, but districts and schools need to keep the lines of communication open, because that’s the only way we’re going to be able to continue to confront all of the changes that come down the pipe regarding what students are supposed to be learning or how they learn the content.”
Open communication doesn’t look like simply talking at one another, but digging into what both parents’ and educators’ fears are about the issue, Daniels said.
“‘What is your fear if your child reads this book?’ That’s an open conversation, right?” Daniels said.
“That is allowing parents to be vulnerable and to say, ‘This is my fear. I’m afraid my child might X, Y and Z,’ and then being able to confront that and have a conversation about that. … Schools should also be able to say, ‘Well, my fear for your child not being able to have access to these books or this text is this,’ and then seeing where we can meet in the middle.”
Collaboration and conversation
Parent activists say they are seeking a collaborative relationship when determining what’s available, though the relationship parents are wanting to have with schools might be more involved than many are used to seeing historically.
“The important thing is parents need to be given the opportunity to be involved,” Lew-Hobbs said.
“Ultimately, it’s the parent who’s driving the education of their child. And, not all, but we need to make sure that schools, teachers, administrators, don’t think that they are the ones that are in charge of a child’s education. It’s the parents. So they have to have to partner with the parents and communicate with the parents.”
“Our team advocates for a transparent process of reviewing and purchasing books,” Peterson wrote.
“Librarians and media specialists can lead the selection but need input from parents and the community on final purchases. We believe schools must work to balance students’ intellectual freedom with children’s emotional and psychological safety.”
Daniels pointed to three different forms of parenting that can be present in these instances of conflict.
There’s the infamous helicopter parent, the overprotective one who hovers over their child in hopes of rescuing them from whatever problem comes their way. The snowplow or lawnmower parent doesn’t allow space for problems to arise at all — they’ll do anything it takes to bulldoze obstacles before they even reach their child.
Whereas the balanced hummingbird parent keeps a watchful eye off in the wings while still giving their children space to learn and problem solve on their own.
Each of these parents likely has a different methodology around how they tackle their concerns over inappropriate material. Some may become more involved in the classroom or PTA. Some may move their child to another school. Some may even run for a seat on the school board. But that concern ultimately points to one bottom line.
“I’m a firm believer that every parent wants the best for their kid,” Daniels said.