Cobb Superintendent Chris Ragsdale announced the district removed four books from school libraries, after a review found them to contain inappropriate content.
The books are “It Ends With Us” by Colleen Hoover, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky, “Lucky” by Alice Sebold and “13 Reasons Why” by Jay Asher, he said at a board meeting Thursday.
District staff was reviewing the media collection for “sexually explicit” books, Ragsdale said in January. The effort was spurred in part by a similar endeavor in Marietta City Schools. The Marietta school board directed Superintendent Grant Rivera several months ago to review the 20,000 books in the high school library for explicit content. He recommended 23 be removed. The school board upheld that recommendation and recently denied appeals from parents who asked to reinstate all of the books.
All four of the books that were recently removed in Cobb were previously removed in Marietta. Cobb also previously removed three other books that were also removed in Marietta: “Flamer” by Mike Curato and “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” by Jesse Andrews, and “Blankets” by Craig Thompson.
Both districts have been criticized for restricting access to books and for allegedly targeting books that feature LGBTQ+ characters. Not for the first time, Ragsdale spoke at length about his duty to protect students from “lewd” and “vulgar” content.
“We are no more banning books than we are banning rated R or NC-17 movies,” he said.
