City librarians in Huntington Beach began moving books about the human body and puberty out of the children's section at Huntington Beach Central Library on Wednesday.
Librarians made the changes in an effort to comply with a city council resolution to restrict access to books with sexual content to people 18 and older.
The controversial measure, sponsored by now-Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark, was passed on a 4-3 vote in October with support from her fellow conservative council members.
Librarians began reviewing books dedicated to the human body, health and puberty Wednesday morning. They told LAist they had been instructed to move any books out of the children's section showing body parts that typically would be covered by a bathing suit. (After this story was first published, a Huntington Beach librarian told LAist the criteria has since been updated: Librarians are now being told to look for “material with explicit sexual content and sexual references,” they said in an email.)
Van Der Mark told LAist it sounded like the process was consistent with what she expected from the resolution. She added that she was unaware the book review was starting until she was contacted by LAist.
In the bright, ample children's section, librarians began their review by flipping through books on shelves dedicated to the human body, health and puberty.
The librarians debated whether to move certain books, like one, a science book, with an illustration of a nude male body showing the muscular system, and another with a page full of photos, one of which showed the top half of a female toddler in a bathtub. The former stayed on the shelf; the latter got moved.
They also decided to remove a book that had information about miscarriages, though it had no accompanying photos.
After about half an hour, they had stacked 41 books on the cart to be moved to the library's adult section, or about one in five books they reviewed.
Some titles moved out of the children's library include:
So far, only the Huntington Beach Central Library, the city’s main branch, has begun reviewing books to comply with the city’s resolution. Library manager Jessica Framson said other branches would begin the work in the coming weeks.
Implementing the city council's mandate to restrict children's access to library books with sexual content was delayed in part because until recently, librarians were unclear what exactly was meant by "sexual content."
According to internal emails reviewed by LAist, the city's director of community and library services, Ashley Wysocki, told librarians earlier this year to follow the Wikipedia definition of sexual content. The Wikipedia page describes sexual content as including “explicit, implicit sexual behavior such as flirting, or include sexual language and euphemisms.”
More recently, librarians said they were told to go by the bathing suit rule. They told LAist that the work of reviewing books for sexual content is likely to get much harder when they start on the fiction section of the children's library, where the classification system and titles aren't so obvious. The Huntington Beach children's library contains 40,000-45,000 unique titles, librarians said..
Van Der Mark, the mayor, said she was pleased the process of reviewing books had started. She said her first job was as a library page, "and we didn't have books with erections, we didn't have books there that showed the vagina in detail, we didn't have books that described how to give yourself an orgasm.
"What we're trying to do is take our library back to the days where our kids were able to go to the children's section and run around and open books and look at the pictures and read and have it be safe the way it used to be," she said.
Patti Pappas, a supporter of the new review process, told LAist in a phone interview that she didn't agree with some of the books that librarians had pulled. "It sounds like they need some guidance if they're pulling 'The Potty Book,'" she said. "They're not looking for pornographic content."
Charlotte Gonzalez, who was at the children's library with her 13-year-old daughter as the book review was underway, called the new children's book policy "heartbreaking."
"The library's for everybody so we should be able to choose what we want to have and [the books] need to be available," she said. Gonzalez said she considered the children's library a safe space for kids to learn. "It has better information than what they can get on the internet," she said.
Librarians are also set to launch new rules for children's library cards, which will give parents more control over which books their kids can check out on their own.
Starting March 1, all of the approximately 8,000 youth library card holders (for those under 18) will find their cards expired. To renew them, they'll have to go to the library with a parent, who can then decide whether to give them access to check out all books, or just books in the kids' section.
The city council is also working on setting up a parent/guardian review board to evaluate potential new material for the children's library and, according to Van Der Mark, to be the final arbiter of which books should be moved to the adult section when librarians are unable to decide.
Each council member can appoint up to three members to the review board. Van Der Mark said she hoped recruiting for the board would start within a few weeks.
