In 2022, a grandmother in Catawba County, North Carolina, asked the county’s school board to remove 24 books from the district’s libraries. Her request was part of a wave of book challenges across the country.
In 2023, a reported 9,021 books were challenged in public schools and libraries across the country, according to the American Library Association. “We are real concerned about what these kids are being exposed to and what they are coming up against,” Teague said during a public comment at a board meeting in April 2022.
In 2023 alone, 4,240 unique book titles were challenged in the United States — 65% more than in 2022, according to ALA data. “A great emphasis has been on books touching on gender identity and sexual orientation and an effort to move the needle on what is considered inappropriate for young people to read," Caldwell said."So that any topic, any book, touching on issues dealing with sex or sexuality are off-limits for young people.”
“When you have these sort of flashpoints around certain texts, it just limits what educators do,” Hutt said. “I tend to trust our teachers, and I tend to trust their judgment. They spend a lot of time with our students, they tend to know how to engage them, they tend to understand the things that are on their minds.
During her campaign, Teague said she hoped to change the process by which books are challenged and reviewed in Catawba County. In the candidate profile, Teague said the policy needed to be streamlined. Wycoff shares videos and podcasts reviewing books he describes as pornographic, explicit or inappropriate for schools and promoting his campaign to remove these books from school libraries. His campaign materials also focus on changing school media policies to change the process of book challenges in Burke County schools.
“I felt compelled to bring the issue to the people of Burke County,” Wycoff said in the podcast episode. “I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would ever be one day be running for political office, but this is something that I sincerely do believe that is something that God wants me to do.” Sitting on the board, members have a hand in affecting policy or book challenge decisions, directly impacting what books are removed, who can challenge books or how challenged books are reviewed.