Cobb County Schools Bans More Books

Plus Marietta in the Middle goes to the movies.

Neighboring Cobb County Schools is still in the book banning business. Dear Reader, let’s hope they keep that nonsense on their side of the district boundary line.

On Friday, CCSD announced they were banning 13 more books, bringing their total of banned library books to 20. That’s five books short of Marietta City Schools Board of Education’s record-breaking 25 banned books, so MCS school board members still hold the title of State Champions of Book Banning.

In May, the National Women’s Law Center filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) asking for an investigation of CCSD’s book bans, describing them as discriminatory and stating they are creating a hostile environment for LGBT students and students of color. You can read our reporting on the OCR complaint here as well as our reporting on the discriminatory nature of the MCS book bans here.

You’ll recognize many of the books on the latest CCSD list because MCS banned them first. If, as the OCR complaint alleges, CCSD’s banning of library books creates a hostile environment for their students, that same hostile environment exists in MCS schools as well, and MCS is lucky they were not included in the NWLC’s complaint.

Here is a list of the latest library books banned by CCSD:

• All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson;

• Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling;

• City of Thieves by David Benioff;

• Crank by Ellen Hopkins;

• Identical by Ellen Hopkins;

• Tricks by Ellen Hopkins;

• It Starts With Us by Colleen Hoover;

• The Infinite Moment of Us by Colleen Hoover;

• Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera;

• Laid: Young People’s Experience with Sex in an Easy-Access Culture by Shannon T. Boodram;

• Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany Jackson;

• Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur;

• Push by Sapphire.

Ten of these books were previously banned by the MCS School Board in their big push to ban books from the MHS library last school year. Of the three books not previously banned by MCS—Laid, Push, and Milk and Honey—only Milk and Honey was in the MHS library as of this past Saturday. It does not appear that MHS has ever had the other two books. Marietta in the Middle will be monitoring the library catalog to ensure the School Board doesn’t quietly remove Milk and Honey from Media Center shelves.

In an interview with the Marietta Daily Journal, CCSD parent Sharon Hudson, who reportedly left the CCSD board meeting in tears, summed up nicely what the book bans in both school districts are all about.

“It’s fear mongering. It’s playing to his base of Christian nationalists that want books removed. For the record, I am a Christian, Republican conservative. I’m not an activist. I’m not liberal,” she said. “He’s calling anyone who disagrees with him evil. … He’s basically talking about me.”

After the January vote to ignore parent appeals to keep the targeted books in the MHS media center, the MCS School Board claimed to be out of the book banning business. Let’s hold them to that.

---

Meetup at the Movies

Last Friday, Marietta in the Middle hosted a Meetup at the Movies to see It Ends With Us, a Blake Lively rendition of Colleen Hoover’s novel of the same name. If that title sounds familiar, it’s because the book was banned from the MHS Media Center by the MCS School Board.

At the time, school board members, Jaillene Hunter and Jason Waters, were claiming books with mature content were pornography and equating mainstream novels like It Ends With Us with magazines like Playboy and Hustler. Yes, those comparisons were as absurd then as they sound today. Open records show Hunter coaching one of her school board member colleagues to use the word “pornography” when speaking to the media about the banned books, talking points that were straight out of Moms for Liberty propaganda, and we now know, straight out of Project 2025. (Moms for Liberty is listed as one of the coalition partners for Project 2025.)

Book ban supporters got in front television news cameras and breathlessly declared that any movie made from the banned books would have to be Rated X. You read that right. Rated X. Despite the already established fact that one of the banned books, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, had been made into a movie in 2012, and that movie was— wait for it—Rated PG-13.

It Ends With Us is also Rated PG-13. It’s a movie that deals with the difficult subject of domestic violence, and to this writer, they handle it with appropriate sensitivity. At its core, the movie is a romance, but one that doesn’t have the conventional boy gets girl, Happily Ever After ending endemic to the genre. Like the book, the movie is a warning to theaters full of the Millennial women who make up the bulk of Hoover’s fanbase of what domestic violence looks like, even when the love interest is charming and smart and successful and all the things Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni) presents to Lily Bloom (Blake Lively).

Also like the book, the movie offers information on resources for those experiencing domestic violence in their relationships. This is the main thing MHS students lost when this book was banned from the MHS Media Center—the opportunity to see themselves in the characters of Lily and Ryle and the resources available to them if needed. As we discussed in an earlier post last spring, one in three high school students will experience physical or sexual violence. We need to equip them to see the signs of abuse in their relationships so they recognize the need to get help. What better way to do this than through literature or film?

The movie has less sexual content than the book. Despite the heavy subject, it would be appropriate for ages 14+ and with parental discretion for younger teens.