'Challenges our authority': School board in Florida bans book about book bans
The Indian River County School Board voted to remove "Ban This Book" by Alan Gratz from its shelves in a meeting last month, overruling its own district book-review committee's decision to keep it.
The children's novel follows a fictional fourth grader who creates a secret banned books locker library after her school board pulled a multitude of titles off the shelves.
Indian River County School Board members said they disliked how it referenced other books that had been removed from schools and accused it of "teaching rebellion of school board authority," as described in the formal motion to oust it.
The book, which had been in two Indian River County elementary schools and a middle school, was challenged by Jennifer Pippin. She's the head of the area's local chapter of Moms for Liberty, a national conservative group that has become one of the loudest advocates for removing books they deem inappropriate.
The book has also been challenged at least one other time in Florida, by someone in Clay County, but school officials there decided to keep it in circulation.
