Marie-Louise Gay's children's books often pop up on various recommended lists, like "books to watch for" and books that "inspire a love of reading." At one Alabama library, however, one of the award-winning Canadian author and illustrator's picture books was placed on a list of potentially "sexually explicit" books that needed to be reviewed and possibly moved to the adult section, though not because of its actual content. AL.com notes that Read Me a Story, Stella, a book about "a pair of siblings reading books together and building a doghouse," ended up on said list within the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library due to the writer's last name, Gay.
HCPL's executive director, Cindy Hewitt, tells the news outlet that "gay" was one of the keyword triggers used to flag more than 200 books, a move she insists was a "proactive" one to get ahead of what she predicts to be an "unprecedented" year of book challenges. Hewitt adds that the library system used a list compiled by Clean Up Alabama to guide its review process, and that keywords she'd asked branch managers to employ in search of books to potentially move included "sexuality," "gender," "sex," and "dating." She also concedes Gay's book shouldn't have been flagged at all.
"Obviously, we're not going to touch that book for any reason," she notes. Some of her own employees are upset that any books at all are being preemptively reviewed, before criticism had even been logged from the public. "Why are we just unilaterally moving all of this before anyone's even complained about these books yet?" says Alyx Kim-Yohn, a circulation manager at the library system's Madison branch who refused to take part in the review process.
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"The decision had been made," Kim-Yohn added. "There was no debate." AL.com got its hands on the library's "to be reviewed" list and found 91 of the 233 titles on that list, or about 40%, targeted books with LGBTQ+ themes, including with words like "lesbian," "gay," "transgender," "gender identity," or "gender non-conforming" in the subject header. Kirsten Brassard, Gay's publicist at Groundwood Books, calls the situation "laughable," but also a serious one. "This proves, as always, that censorship is ... about sending the message to children that certain ideas—or even certain people—are not worthy of discussion or acknowledgement or consideration," she says. (More censorship stories.)
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