DC School District Restores Gay-Themed Titles to Summer Reading Lists

The Washington, DC, school district that had previously scrubbed gay-themed books from its summer reading list has restored all of the titles following objections from librarians and the capital’s gay and lesbian community.

The District of Columbia Public Schools added nine LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning) titles—including Justin Richardson’s And Tango Makes Three (S & S, 2005) and Todd Parr’s The Family Book (Little, Brown, 2003)—to its final list after a meeting between the school district and the District of Columbia Public Library on June 18—a few days after local schools had already closed for summer vacation.

A preliminary summer reading list that had omitted several gay-themed titles had appeared on the district’s summer reading Web site last week. Although it said the list was tentative and that a completed list would be released on June 26, pdf versions of each list, broken down by grade levels, were marked “Final”.

SLJ last week reported on a comment posted on the American Library Association’s GLBT listserve stating that “The DC (District of Columbia) Public Schools decided to scrub their summer reading list of all GLBT related books.”

See DC School District Restores Gay-Themed Titles to Summer Reading Lists

School Library Journal

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