What our public libraries want your children to read

Republished from the WRN blog and summarising work done by the excellent women of WRN Somerset and West Dorset

It’s amazing what you can find in libraries these days. From films to job adverts, from broadband access to magazines and books, the library service is like a trusted friend who lends you all their best stuff and offers to keep the children entertained on a wet weekend in the summer holidays. And they’ve been around forever, too. Well, since the Public Libraries Act (1850) in England and Wales, and extended to Scotland and Ireland in 1853. Financed by all of us, available to all of us, trusted by all of us.

But that trust has been betrayed. Like an unexplained receipt found in a pocket, or lipstick on the collar of a cheating spouse, the evidence is there in plain sight. It goes unnoticed because we trust our libraries to keep their side of the bargain and make sure that the books in the children’s section are the best and most appropriate available.

And for nearly all of the 174 years since the library service was established, that was the case. I’m sorry to have to reveal, that is no longer true. Like too many other of our civic institutions, libraries – and CILIP the librarians’ professional body – have let us and our children down.

The women of WRN Somerset & West Dorset looked at the books in the children’s sections of our local libraries. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Books promoting gender identity ideology and the belief that people can change their sex were available for even the youngest of children (including board books for babies). We found books that erase women and girls as a sex class, that erase the concept of same sex attraction. Books that undermine safeguarding, encourage risky sexual behaviour and are inappropriately sexually explicit for the age of their target audience.

Take a look for yourself – a copy of our report can be downloaded here.

We sent the report to the relevant local councillors and in news that will come as no surprise to anyone, not one council in an area covering 2.1 million people had a problem with any of this. In fact, they told us that some of these books are included in the Reading Agency’s national Reading Well for Teens collection, a scheme that:

supports the mental health and wellbeing of teenagers, providing information, advice and support to help teens better understand their feelings, handle difficult experiences and boost confidence. The books included are quality assured and chosen by experts including doctors and other health professionals.

Which rather begs the questions; what expertise do these doctors and health professionals have and why are they recommending books that, amongst a host of other concerns: 

●       signpost children to Mermaids, the charity that is under investigation by the Charity Commission for safeguarding failures (Coming Out Stories);

●       encourage the kind of extreme dieting that results in eating disorders (Welcome To St Hell).

We’d like to know why our libraries promote children’s books that 

●       normalise anal sex for heterosexual couples (This Book Is Gay);

●       describe how to make your own breast binders (Trans Mission).  

It was clear from the councillors’ responses that our report had been seen as a demand for censorship from women who were offended by these books, which is not the case and entirely misses the point. We explicitly state in the report that we do not want the books to be banned, and nowhere do we claim offence. The problem is the lack of child safeguarding.

Our report was taken seriously enough to be discussed by the partnership of 7 library services that comprises Libraries West, and at least two of those services recatalogued Coming Out Stories as not suitable for pre-teens.

So they do understand that material should be age-appropriate, and that cataloguing books in an age-appropriate manner is not censorship.

Are these books age-appropriate? Here’s what Juno Dawson has to say in This Book Is Gay:

For some, cheating is cheating and that is that. Jealousy and paranoia are enough to make a peen shrivel like a salted slug or a vag slam shut like a clam - NOT SEXY. For most, having sex with other people is a deal breaker and you may have to accept that or find a more compatible partner.

However, all people - gay or otherwise - must recognise that there is one universal truth of the universe:

WE ALL WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH LOADS OF PEOPLE.

And this is what he has to report about lesbian sex:

But back to orgasms. I love a good shag from a hand or a dildo - vaginal or anal - but, honestly, that’s not about the orgasm that’s about the pleasure of being shagged. And sometimes that pleasure is pleasure enough in itself.

It’s not exactly Enid Blyton, is it? And it makes a mockery of their “robust safeguarding” policies and practices that This Book Is Gay is recommended for children from 13 years old. 

The councils confirmed that those “robust safeguarding” policies and practices don’t review publishers’ target age recommendations. All are accepted as gospel despite every council acknowledging that these recommendations are just guidance and not legally binding. Several respondents consider the age recommendations arbitrary which is frankly baffling and suggests that dictionaries are in short supply.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that target age grading is anything like the British Board of Film Classification – book publishers don’t need to engage any sort of safeguarding panel when they set them. The target audience for a book is determined by how difficult the book is to read – how many words, how many chapters, and whether it is a picture book – not its subject matter.

And the problem remains that there are dozens of copies of a book that encourages extreme dieting in the teens section of our public libraries. There are dozens of titles promoting the idea that gender identity is a reality. And that normalise anal sex for heterosexual couples.

One book (Queer: A Graphic History) includes a picture of a couple “pegging”. In a children’s book in a public library. (Why is this something children need to know about?)

For teenage girls in particular, extreme dieting is very dangerous and can be life threatening. Anal sex causes faecal incontinence and irreparable anal sphincter injury because girls’ and women’s bodies are not sufficiently robust to cope with it. It is far from harmless. And there is plenty of evidence for the numerous harms caused by breast binding. These are just the most obvious safeguarding failures – it’s nothing to do with offence and censorship.

Children don’t need to go looking on the shelves for books that encourage them to believe that they can change sex through synthetic hormones and surgery because libraries are helpfully promoting them on colourful displays that seem deliberately designed to appeal to little children; covered in rainbows and sporting big bold typefaces.

There are no such displays of accessible books explaining that mammals cannot change sex, and that surgical and hormonal interventions are largely experimental and have a significant and detrimental impact on health.

Photographed in a Weston-Super-Mare library in August 2024

And it’s not just the books that are signposting children to Mermaids, the charity that fast tracked children to the infamous Tavistock and Portman gender clinic in London with direct referrals. The display photographed at Weston-Super-Mare is actively promoting Mermaids too, including a QR code for donations. Lest we forget, Mermaids is the charity that, until October 2022, had a Trustee who in 2011 spoke at a conference organised by a group supporting paedophiles. This is going well beyond making legal material available to the public.

It turns out that there are in practice no controls on the books a child may borrow, and an 11-year-old girl was able to borrow all the books on this display. So even if the library does catalogue titles as teen non-fiction, pre-teens can hardly avoid seeing them and are able to read and borrow them.

It’s quite likely that children younger than 11 would be able to borrow these books, too, because there appear to be no checks, even though Coming Out Stories was removed from the pre-teens section in at least 2 of the 7 library regions.

If you have time, have a read of the books that 11-year-old girl borrowed:

●      Coming Out Stories

●      What's the T?

●      This Book is Gay

●      Queer Up

●      Welcome to St. Hell

It is particularly troubling that our libraries see the provision of these concerning books to children as a duty. Several told us that “Librarians also have to bear in mind that not everyone can afford to buy specific books, nor may it be safe for them to do so” with a couple mentioning that “we have a duty”. This looks very like an acknowledgement that they know that parents would not consent to their children reading these books, and that parents’ wishes are being actively undermined. It drives a coach and horses through any suggestion that it is up to parents to ensure their children only read books that are age appropriate.

The librarians probably don’t read all of these books. They might not read any of them. And they probably still think that the “progress pride” flag indicates some civil rights struggle for an oppressed minority. Perhaps this is why they were comfortable scattering 2BU stickers and cards throughout one library we visited. On shelves, on doors, on staff laptops. 2BU Somerset is one of those LGBTQ+ organisations that promotes gender identity ideology to children and young adults, including a myriad of identities and the sort of science denialism that claims that sex is “assigned at birth”. 

Perhaps this is what the respondents were referring to when they spoke of creating a “safe and inclusive space for everyone”. At least, for everyone who supports gender identity ideology. Not so much for those who don’t.

Check out the children’s shelves at your local public library. If you don’t like what you see, let the librarians and your local council know. The removal of harmful material from the children’s section of public libraries is not censorship. It is safeguarding.

Originally published as a WRN blog.