List of books slated for removal from Edmonton school libraries contains ‘significant works of literature’: former trustee

'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood is among the books that will be removed from Edmonton Public School libraries for containing sexual content.

Several award-winning books may be removed from Edmonton public school libraries amid new rules from the provincial Ministry of Education and Childcare.

A list sent to Bridget Stirling, a former Edmonton Public School Board (EPSB) trustee, shows that hundreds of books are subject to leave school library shelves.

On Friday, EPSB confirmed to CTV News Edmonton that the list is accurate.

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“It actually contains some really significant works of literature,” Stirling told CTV News Edmonton in an interview on Thursday. “They’re books that allow youth an insight into the worlds of other people.”

The list includes novels like The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Forever by Judy Blume.

Stirling said she noticed many books written by women, LGBTQ2S+ authors, Indigenous authors and historically racialized writers.

“We want kids to be reading voices from a whole range of perspectives in schools, and it’s troubling to see who’s now going to be left out,” she added.

Board Chair Julie Kusiek said in a statement that the board agrees with concerns raised regarding the list, although they are working to comply with provincial legislation.

An emailed statement to CTV News Edmonton encouraged those with concerns about a flagged book to contact the education minister directly.

Kusiek added the board had initially objected to the provincial changes before the order to flag and remove books was issued.

“Division staff worked over the summer to ensure that only books that directly met the criteria in the ministerial order were added to the Division’s removal list,” the statement read.

Background

This past May, Alberta Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides issued an order to flag books with inappropriate explicit or non-explicit sexual content.

On Thursday, Nicolaides told CTV News Edmonton the Alberta government had not provided the list to EPSB.

“We have asked Edmonton Public to clarify why these books were selected to be pulled, and we will work with them to ensure the standards are accurately implemented,” he said in an emailed statement.

Nicolaides added that “children should not be exposed to content like oral sex, sex toy use or child molestation and that is why we created this policy.”

He clarified that some non-explicit sexual content may be accessible to students in Grade 10 and above if it’s age-appropriate, and the Edmonton school board’s list does not differentiate between students that age and other younger students.

Alberta was, up to this point, working with voluntary guidelines for library books, wherein school boards would follow their own processes for selecting age-appropriate and relevant materials for students.

The order was created to ensure “young kids are not exposed to sexually explicit books,” Nicolaides said.

The minister previously told Calgary reporters that a group of concerned parents had approached him with information about explicit materials in school libraries, which alerted him to the issue.

Stirling said that without more provincial direction, school boards will most likely have to make similar decisions to EPSB’s by Oct. 1, when the new rules are meant to come into play.

“School divisions are left making their own best guess as to what’s allowed, but these are books on the list of ones that are often challenged … and they’re not challenged because they’re graphic pornographic materials,” she said.

‘Problem of censorship’

James Turk, the director of the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University, said many of the books on the list don’t contain much, if any, sexually explicit material.

“If they pull Brave New World, we’re into a really crazy world,” he said in an interview Thursday.

He argued that many of the books being flagged for removal deal with difficult or controversial subjects, but not always sexually explicit ones.

“It’s the problem of censorship,” he added. “For several thousand years, people felt the way to make the world better is by preventing everyone from seeing, hearing or reading anything that you think is wrong.”

He said the problem with the ministerial order comes from the fact that it was petitioned by Action for Canada’s Calgary chapter, a lobby group he said is “against public education.”

“They’re going after books in school libraries they think shouldn’t be there … They just ideologically say nobody should read these books, so we’re going to get them pulled.”

He said pulling inappropriate books is a “massive exercise” that teachers and librarians are trained in because they’re familiar with the age and learning levels of students.

“I think, broadly, most Canadians think freedom of expression is a good idea,” Turk noted.

“All of us are in favour of free speech, until we come across expressions that we don’t like.”

With files from CTV News Calgary and CTV News Edmonton’s Nicole Weisberg, Galen McDougall