What’s in Iowa’s banned books? I read them so you don’t have to

I read more than 50 of the books most frequently targeted for removal based on SF 496. Here’s what I found.

Note: We took this month off from writing our newspaper column to celebrate our anniversary. I took the opportunity to share my thoughts on Iowa’s still-enjoined book ban law.

"Book burning" by pcorreia is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The Background: A Book Ban

In 2023, Iowa Republicans adopted the book ban law SF 496. The law would have prohibited instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity before seventh grade and banned materials containing “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act as defined in section 702.17” from K-12 libraries. This meant that any library material that describes or depicts any of the following must be removed:

[A]ny sexual contact between two or more persons by any of the following:

1. Penetration of the penis into the vagina or anus.

2. Contact between the mouth and genitalia or mouth and anus or by contact between the genitalia of one person and the genitalia or anus of another person.

3. Contact between the finger, hand, or other body part of one person and the genitalia or anus of another person, except in the course of examination or treatment by a person licensed pursuant to chapter 148, 148C, 151, or 152.

4. Ejaculation onto the person of another.

5. By use of artificial sexual organs or substitutes therefor in contact with the genitalia or anus.

6. The touching of a person’s own genitals or anus with a finger, hand, or artificial sexual organ or other similar device at the direction of another person.¹

The enforcement mechanism was draconian: if two books still in the library were found to violate 

the law, the librarian and school superintendent could both lose their teaching licenses.

But on December 29, 2023, a federal judge issued an injunction prohibiting enforcement of the book ban and instruction ban portions of the law, days before the enforcement mechanism was to go into effect. This means that schools do not have to remove any of these books from their shelves at present, although some schools have chosen to do so anyway. Shannon and I wrote about our thoughts on the wisdom, or lack thereof, of that move in August.

Before the injunction was issued, the Des Moines Register started a series of articles on the book ban law. It also started a database of the books removed by various districts obtained through Freedom of Information requests before the injunction.²

I have gone through this pre-injunction database, which currently contains 63 pages of 20 books per page, the information the Register received up to December 20, 2023. I looked up what awards each book in the database had won and made lists of which districts had removed each book.³

Then I started reading. To date, I’ve read more than 50 of the most-frequently banned books.

The Banned Books

First and foremost, many of the most-frequently removed books are award-winning books and/or written by award-winning authors. These awards range from prestigious literary awards like the Printz Award or the Nobel Prize in Literature to crowdsourced honors like GoodReads Choice Awards. Many are also classics, frequently used in classroom instruction and AP Literature exams: Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner,⁴ Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,⁵ Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.⁶

Which brings us to the next observation: many of these books are about sexual abuse and sexual assault. Take Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak.⁷ It is about a teen girl who made a bad, but common, decision (underage drinking) that can and did lead to sexual assault and how the assault affected her personally, socially, and academically. Such books are not pornographic; they are protective.

In fact, a distressing number of the books removed are the protective variety about basic health information. The Alta-Aurelia district, for example, removed an entire series of books about sexually transmitted diseases and women’s health conditions, from Gonorrhea to Endometriosis.⁸ These are topics that might be briefly covered in a basic health class, but woe to the girl who wants to find out from a credible source (as opposed to AI-fueled misinformation) about whether her unusually painful periods might mean she should see a doctor.

And speaking of misinformation, some districts have removed books that do not meet the legal requirements for removal. Recall, the law requires removal of books that contain “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act as defined in section 702.17,” but does not require removal of books about LGTBQ+ people, animals, or characters. Several districts removed innocuous fiction and nonfiction books about LGBTQ+ people or characters, such as And Tango Makes Three,⁹ a sweet nonfiction children’s book about two male penguins who adopt an abandoned chick.

Perhaps worse, several districts appear to have erroneously removed books that merely share a title with a book that contains banned material. Does Alan Cumyn’s Tilt¹⁰ contain banned material, or does it merely share a title with Ellen Hopkins’ book¹¹ of the same title? What about Jessica Warman’s,¹² Amy McCulloch’s,¹³ and Pam Withers’¹⁴ respective books titled Breathless--do they merely share a title with Jennifer Niven’s Breathless?¹⁵

And worst of all, some districts seem to have taken this law as an excuse to remove any book that might possibly cause anyone offense, ever. Take Nevada. It initially removed over 200 books, although the Register pre-injunction database now indicates that several of those books were restored even before the injunction was issued, paring the list down to 65 that all remain off the shelves. That said, there are still books on the list that do not contain any LGBTQ+ characters, “a description or visual depiction of a sex act,” any reference to sex at all, or even any kissing. George Orwell’s Animal Farm¹⁶ is a prime example: the anti-Communist novella may be offensive to would-be authoritarian rulers, but it most certainly does not need to be removed from shelves to comply with SF 496. Likewise John Knowles’ A Separate Peace,¹⁷ a coming-of-age story about friendship and death in the context of a far-off war that is absolutely not in violation of SF 496.

To end this survey on a positive note, though, one thing that struck me as I went through the database is that many of the books were removed by only one district. There are two ways to take this: one is that different districts are taking different stances on what violates the law. The other, which I prefer, is that these titles are only in one library in the first place. I like to think that school librarians chose these books for specific, local reasons: a group of students who would really enjoy the book, a local issue that made the book relevant, a local tie with the author. These one-offs give me a small window to our school librarians thoughtfully curating their collections, doing their librarian thing.

Conclusions: Debunking Some Myths

So let’s dispense with some false claims made by proponents of this law.

The law does not protect children, and the state does not care about protecting children. A state that has decided that a 7-year-old should ever have to carry a baby to term is not concerned about protecting children.

And a law like this one cannot, by its nature, protect children. Children who are armed with information are less likely to be abused. This law takes information away from children, both nonfiction that explains their bodies and what dangers they may face in the world and fiction that helps them to understand these things through storytelling.

It also takes books away from adults. Most K-12 students will turn 18 by the end of their senior year of high school. And some families may want their children to be able to access these books, but have no way to do that for financial, transportation, or other reasons. What right does the Iowa government have to dictate what books adults can access?

Finally, proponents of the law have repeatedly claimed that it bans pornography. It does not do that. The wording of the law, in plain language, bans descriptions of very specific types of contact between very specific organs. That is far, far broader than merely pornography. As U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Locher wrote, the law is “incredibly broad," "unlikely to satisfy the First Amendment under any standard of scrutiny,” and he was not able to locate a single case upholding such a law under the First Amendment. The law has caused schools to remove a broad range of books, none of which qualify as pornography under any legal or realistic standard.

Indeed, in all my reading, I encountered only one book that I personally felt had an uncomfortable focus on sexual desire and sexual contact, as opposed to any sex being briefly mentioned or a minor incident in the plot. That was Andre Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name,¹⁸ a romance novel about a 17-year-old boy and a 25-year old man. I understand why a parent might not want their child, even an older teen, to read it. But the way to address that would have been to have the school prohibit that parent’s child to check out the book. If a parent thought it was so beyond the pale that it ought not be in the school’s library, that parent could challenge the book, a well-established process that might have resulted in its removal. An over-broad ban that captures everything from the former President’s comments about assaulting women to a brief, awkward teenage encounter to a mechanical educational description is absolutely not the answer.

And if the proponents of the ban really do consider all of those things pornographic or even titillating, I really must wonder what goes on (or doesn’t) in their homes. But that is their problem; they shouldn't be making it ours.

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree lives in Iowa.

1. Incidentally, the Iowa Code and this piece are both banned in Iowa school libraries, as they both describe these sex acts in the course of defining them.

2. The Register released a new series of articles in today’s (June 9, 2024) Sunday edition, revealing that the database I worked from is no longer being updated. A new database is included in this article, showing which districts put books back on the shelves after the injunction was issued. The Register found that at least 3400 books will be removed if the law goes into effect, including 1295 that were returned to shelves following the injunction.

3. For writing this piece, I used the updated numbers from today’s Register, although the books I read were those most frequently removed in the original pre-injunction database.

4. The Kite Runner was removed by 52 districts in response to the book ban law. 14 of those replaced it on the shelves following the injunction.

5. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was removed by 28 districts in response to the book ban law. 10 of those replaced it on the shelves following the injunction.

6. The Color Purple was removed by 46 districts in response to the book ban law. 16 of those replaced it on the shelves following the injunction.

7. Speak was removed by 31 districts in response to the book ban law. Only one of those replaced it on the shelves following the injunction.

8. These were returned to the shelf following the injunction. They would presumably be removed again should SF 496 go into effect.

9. And Tango Makes Three was removed by 3 districts in response to the book ban law. 2 of those replaced it on the shelves following the injunction.

10. Alan Cumyn’s Tilt was removed only by Nevada and not replaced on the shelves following the injunction.

11. Ellen Hopkins’ Tilt was removed by 29 districts in response to the book ban law. 10 of those replaced it on the shelves following the injunction.

12. Jessica Warman’s Breathless was removed only by Central Lyon and not replaced on the shelves following the injunction.

13. Amy McCulloch’s Breathless was removed only by Mid-Prairie and not replaced on the shelves following the injunction.

14. Pam Withers’ Breathless was removed only by Ottumwa and not replaced on the shelves following the injunction.

15. Jennifer Niven’s Breathless was removed by 16 districts in response to the book ban law. 9 of those replaced it on the shelves following the injunction.

16. Animal Farm was removed by both Nevada and Pocahontas and not returned to the shelves following the injunction.

17. A Separate Peace was removed by 6 districts in response to the book ban law. Only 1 of those replaced it on the shelves following the injunction. Urbandale reshelved it before the Register started the pre-injunction database.

18. Call Me By Your Name was removed by two districts, Urbandale and Waterloo, which both replaced it on the shelves following the injunction.