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Board Refuses to Bar Teen Titles

The board of the Cape May County (N.J.) Library voted unanimously November 15 to accept the recommendation of Director Andrew Martin to retain three books about adolescent issues that had been challenged by a patron:

Real Girl/Real World: Tools for Finding Your True Self by Heather M. Gray and Samantha Phillips explores issues such as body image, emerging sexuality, and feminism.
The Notebook Girls, by Julia Baskin, Lindsey Newman, Sophie Pollitt-Cohen, and Courtney Toombs, is comprised of the entries four New York City high-school students made in a shared journal in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The Journey Out: A Guide for and about Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Teens by Rachel Pollack and Cheryl Schwartz, a self-help book for young adults who may be coming to terms with being gay, was the only one of the three challenged titles not to be found on the library shelves, which made a challenge to it moot, Martin advised trustees. He added, “It has gone out once in 11 years.”

“Parents don’t address these things,” library Commissioner Eileen Massey contended before the vote on the titles. “Some of them do,” Martin replied, according to the November 22 Cape May County Herald. “Most of the topics are seen on television.”

Martin, who addressed the challenge as one of his last actions before retiring November 30, told the Herald that so far as he knew, the library has “never removed anything.”

Posted December 1, 2006.

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