As a new Texas law further restricting what books students can check out of school libraries takes effect, local bans are gaining steam in districts across the state–in some cases going in startling directions.
In Katy, a growing Houston suburb, school officials recently bought $93,000 worth of new library books and promptly put them in storage so an internal committee could review them. The district then banned 14 titles (bringing its total since 2021 to 30), including popular books by Dr. Seuss and Judy Blume, as well as “No, David!” an award-winning children’s book featuring a mischievous cartoon character who at one point jumps out of a bathtub, exposing a cartoon backside. (This wasn’t the district’s first foray into regulating cartoon nudity; over the summer, a book about a crayon that lost its wrapper, becoming “naked” in the process, was flagged for review but ultimately retained.)
Following the latest removals, the Katy school board decided that cartoon butts would be exempted from a district policy that called for removing books showing nudity. “Explicit frontal nudity,” on the other hand, would not be allowed.
