Horror master Stephen King did not mince words in responding to the news that 23 of his books had been banned from school libraries in Florida, a state that has seen increasingly stringent rules around book bans in recent years.
“Florida has banned 23 pf [sic] my books. What the f**k?” the author wrote in a succinct social media post over the weekend.
The banning of several of King’s titles — including “Carrie,” “It,” “The Long Walk” and more — stems from House Bill 1069, which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis inked into law in 2022. The legislation, which stemmed from complaints leveled by far-right group Moms for Liberty, seeks to eradicate books deemed to be sexually explicit from grade schools. The bill, first introduced by Republican state Rep. Stan McClain, also mandates that schools instruct on the “benefits of monogamous heterosexual marriag” and require educators to teach that “sex is determined by biology and reproductive function at birth . . . and that these reproductive roles are binary, stable, and unchangeable.”
As noted by The Independent, a number of prominent publishing houses — including Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers and Sourcebooks — have banded together to combat the influence of House Bill 1069. “HB 1069 requires school librarians to remove books that contain anything that can be construed as ‘sexual conduct,’ with no consideration of the educational value of the work as a whole. If ‘a parent or a resident of the county’ objects to a book, the book must be removed within five days and remain unavailable until the objection is resolved,” the publishers wrote in a statement published last month. “There is no requirement to review a book within a reasonable time frame — or even to return it if it has been found not to violate the statute. If a book is returned to the library, an objector may request a review by a state-appointed special magistrate at the expense of the school district.”