223 book titles pulled from school library shelves in Virginia, but 75% were in just 5 places

Across Virginia over the past five years, 223 different books have been removed from school library shelves, many of them by more than one school system.

However, those removals have been concentrated in a relative handful of communities.

Hanover County has removed more books from its school library shelves than any other locality in the state — 125 in all. That one county accounts for more than one-third of the book removals in the state. 

Along with another four counties — Rockingham County, which removed 57 books, Goochland County with 34, Madison County with 23 and Spotsylvania County with 19 — those five counties alone accounted for 75% of the book removals in the state.

Meanwhile, 63% of the school systems in the state haven’t removed any books. These range from Fairfax County, the largest school system, in one of the most liberal parts of the state, to most of the localities in Southwest and Southside, the most politically conservative parts of Virginia.

All these are the findings released Monday in a report by the General Assembly’s research arm, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission. The appropriateness of certain books has been a flashpoint in some schools in recent years, culminating with Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s declaration in a 2021 gubernatorial debate that “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions.” That was considered a political gaffe that contributed to Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory on a parental rights platform. This particular report was set in motion by a resolution sponsored by state Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, who wanted to know what schools were doing.

The report points out that local school boards, not the state, have authority over what books are in their libraries. About a quarter of the state’s school systems didn’t reply to JLARC’s request for information, so the figures that follow are only for those that did:

• 88% of the school systems responding have a formal process for book challenges and book removals, although the report said three localities (it didn’t identify which ones) haven’t updated their procedures in more than 15 years (2001, 2009 and 2010).
• 35% of those responding said they didn’t keep records on book removals. Gloucester County, Russell County, Washington County and West Point said they’d removed books but didn’t have records on which ones. Prince George County and Pulaski County said they didn’t know whether they’d removed books or not.
• “No divisions without a book removal policy reported removing any school library books between July 2020 and March 2025,” the report says. “Conversely, about half of the divisions with a book removal policy did not remove any books.”

Hover over each locality to see the number of books removed. Counties in gray either had none or didn’t reply to the General Assembly survey. Gloucester County, Russell County, Washington County and West Point (which doesn’t show up on this base map of counties and cities) are listed here as zero. They all said they’d removed books, but didn’t know how many, but the mapping software only allows for a number. Source: Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission.

The most common reason for a book being pulled from the shelves dealt with sexual content, the report said. The book most frequently removed, pulled by seven school systems, was “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” by Maia Kobabe. The book’s description on Amazon.com calls it an “intensely cathartic autobiography” about “what it means to be non-binary,” and says that the book follows a “journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears.”

The second most-removed book, pulled by six school systems, was “Tilt,” by Ellen Hopkins. It’s the story of three teens and is described by Amazon like this: “Mikayla, almost eighteen, is over-the-top in love with Dylan, who loves her back. But what happens to that love when Mikayla gets pregnant the summer before their senior year — and decides to keep the baby? Shane turns sixteen that same summer and falls hard in love with his first boyfriend, Alex, who happens to be HIV positive. Shane has lived for four years with his little sister’s impending death. Can he accept Alex’s love, knowing that his life, too, will be shortened? Harley is fourteen — a good girl searching for new experiences, especially love from an older boy. She never expects to hurdle toward self-destructive extremes in order to define who she is and who she wants to be.”

Some of the books that were removed were famous ones, including “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut (pulled by three school systems) and “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood (three school systems). Each of these books was removed by one school system apiece: “Beloved” by Toni Morrison; “Interview with the Vampire” by Anne Rice; “Bag of Bones,” “It” and “11/23/63” by Stephen King; and “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (by Gregory McGuire, which was the basis for the musical “Wicked”).

Also removed by one school system apiece were six nonfiction books: “When Plague Strikes: The Black Death, Smallpox, AIDS” and “The Way We Work: Getting to Know the Amazing Human Body,” both intended for younger readers, as well as “Encyclopedia of the Human Body,” “Sexual Health Information for Teens: Health Tips About Sexual Development,” “Medical Discoveries: Medical Breakthroughs and the People who Developed Them” and “The Medical Advisor: the Complete Guide to Alternative & Conventional Treatment,” the latter being a Time-Life Books publication.

Other titles were more obviously controversial, such as “The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish” by Lil Miss Hot Mess, removed by one school system. You can read the full list of 223 titles removed in the JLRC report.

For the schools that didn’t have any book removals, it’s unclear whether that meant no one challenged any books or whether there were challenges that were denied. It could be that those are open-minded communities, or it could be that the school systems simply didn’t have any controversial books on their shelves. All we know is that there were no books removed.

The book removals in Hanover and Rockingham counties have been the subject of well-publicized controversies in those communities. Others have been much quieter.

Franklin County removed 13 books, the seventh-highest figure in the state. None of those involved a parental complaint, said Superintendent Kevin Siers, but resulted from an internal review.

Twelve of those were books in series that later were made into popular movies or television series: the Game of Thrones series by George R.R. Martin, the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon and the Millenium series by Stieg Larsson that starts with “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and includes similar titles. The other was “Push” by Sapphire, which Amazon describes like this: “Precious Jones, an illiterate sixteen-year-old, has up until now been invisible to the father who rapes her and the mother who batters her and to the authorities who dismiss her as just one more of Harlem’s casualties. But when Precious, pregnant with a second child by her father, meets a determined and radical teacher, we follow her on a journey of education and enlightenment as she learns not only how to write about her life, but how to make it truly her own for the first time.” 

Roanoke County had just one book removed: “When Aiden Became a Big Brother,” by Kyle Lukoff, a book about a transgender character. Roanoke County school spokesman Chuck Lionberger said that the removal process began in 2021 when a parent complained to the principal at Herman L. Horn Elementary School. An initial review by a committee of librarians from the county’s elementary, middle and high schools deemed the book appropriate. The parent appealed the decision to a review panel of three community members. That panel decided that the book should be removed from the library shelves but “should be a resource for the school counseling department and could be available for checkout there” with parental permission.

I did not hear back from Campbell County (five books), Carroll County (one book) or Henry County (one book), the only other localities in Southwest and Southside that reported removing books and knowing which ones they were. 

The communities with book removals generally share one thing in common: Many are high-growth communities where there’s likely a clash of cultures taking place over what is appropriate. However, there are other high-growth communities that report no book removals.

Most JLARC reports conclude with a long list of recommendations. This has just one: for the Virginia Department of Education to clarify to school systems what state law actually says about book removals. Some school systems incorrectly cited state law as requiring them to remove certain titles, the report says. The JLARC report says the law does no such thing. There is a 2022 law that requires schools to develop policies to notify parents when sexually explicit topics will be taught so that parents can review the material in advance and pull their child from that lesson. However, JLARC points out that the law specifically does not apply to school libraries and, in fact, says “the provisions of this act shall not be construed as requiring or providing for the censoring of books in public elementary and secondary schools.”

We have some questions for readers on this topic, which we might use as part of our Cardinal Way series on civil conversations. Here they are.

Want more politics? Sign up for West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out on Friday afternoons.