What is in those library books?

School District of the Menomonie Area (Wisconsin)

Book Rating System

Many community members have been concerned about what is being taught in our local public school system. There was, however, no shared vocabulary or consensus on what was acceptable. Are community values still “a thing” at all?

Thankfully, BookLooks.org has produced a rating system for books written for children and youth. It is based on movie, TV and video game rating systems with which we are already familiar.

The “obscenity” criteria for our rating system was created after studying the other rating systems in existence. They all have similar themes regarding what is considered “obscene” (in the traditional sense of the word). Those content categories being: sex, drugs, profanity, violence, alcohol/drug use, etc. and at what age ranges said content has been widely accepted as appropriate for. – Emily from BookLooks.org

This system rates books from 0 – 5 and each number category also has a color. A book rated 0 is the equivalent to a G rated movie. A 1 is PG, 2 is PG-13, 3 is R, 4 is NC-17 and 5 is X. The colors allow libraries to alert readers to contents of concern just by attaching a colored sticker.

For a more graphic description of ratings, click this orange warning then scroll down.

There are actually collections of reviews online using this rating system that are continually being updated. BookLooks has a page where you can search for reviews of a specific book alphabetically.

I asked what poor souls are reading and reviewing all these smut books.

“. . . we have a handful of families [mostly in Brevard County, FL] that volunteer their time. Everyone involved is a volunteer and contributes where their skills allow. No one receives any pay, and we accept no payment or donations. We consider this our ministry and calling to do as our time allows. We all have day jobs completely unrelated to this.” — Emily from BookLooks.org

How to find out if there are age-inappropriate books in your kid’s school library

Step one: Get the link to the online catalog of the library in question.

Here is the catalog link for the School District of the Menomonie Area.

Try this link to search for other school districts around the country.

If that doesn't work, ask your school or the administrative office for the link. If that doesn't work, find a parent whose child attends the school of interest and ask them for the link and any passwords.

Once you select a specific school at the above link, you can click “Back Office” at the top of the page. Change the location to “Menomonie Area School District.” This allows you to search the entire district at once, if you prefer.

Step two: Search the catalog.

Use this spreadsheet. Skim down the list to find the 5s and search for them in the catalog. You might want to note if they are in book, e-book or audio-book format. Then you can check for 4s, etc.

If you find a book in your library from the list you can scroll right on the spreadsheet and see if there are “tinyurl” links. These book reviews are either in a thorough, multi-page format or a one-page “Slicksheet.” Reviews primarily consist of direct quotes/pictures with page numbers of where they appear in the books.

Using a slightly different system I was able to locate a large number of reviewed books at the high school and middle school. For a look at some of the worst stuff found so far in the SDMA catalog, click the orange box. Clicking on a school will get you a long list of rated books listed in that library and the review links.

At present, all current school board members and the district administration are aware of this issue. With the exception of one helpful board member, the response is pretty much . . .

So far NONE of the sitting board members that are running for reelection in April have responded or publicly expressed any concern about this. Now is their chance!

This is the first in a series of articles on this topic for community discussion. Now that we know what is - or recently was - in those books, what can we do? Should we do anything?

There is a school board election on April 4. Consider asking the candidates, especially the incumbents, where they stand on this matter.

I am currently accepting statements from anyone in the community, any of the board members or candidates, any whistle blowers, any opinion pieces anyone wants to send me for possible inclusion in this series.

I will assume you want your name included unless you tell me otherwise.

Thank you.

NOTE: There are also some reviews that might be helpful for personal use at Common Sense Media. They do not use this rating system.

Send submissions to JoyceU@protonmail.com or just comment below.