Jennifer Petersen keeps 73 school books she detests in her basement.

She ordered most from Amazon. In the last year, she read each one. She highlighted & typed up excerpts from more than 1,300 pages — of the 24k+ pgs she read — that she says depict sexual acts. Then she filed challenges against 71 of the books w/ #SpotsylvaniaCounty #PublicSchools, the #Virginia district where one of her children is a student & the other is a recent graduate.

#BookBans #BookBanning #Censorship #Education

Across 434pgs of challenges — longer than many of the books she objected to — Petersen offered variations on a theme.

“This book reads like a how to guide for raping teens,” she wrote of one.

“The book normalizes teen sex & ... glorifies & incites teens to have sex,” she wrote of another.

“What is the fascination,” she asked of a third, “w/so many of these books containing detailed sexual content?”

#BookBans #BookBanning #Censorship #Education #Politicization #Literacy #Extremism #Hysteria

Petersen, 48, is part of a small army of #BookObjectors nationwide. School book challenges reached historic highs in America in 2021 & 2022, acc/to the #ALA. And just a handful of people are driving those records. A WaPo analysis of thousands of challenges nationwide found that 60% of all challenges in the 2021-2022 school year came from 11 adults, each of whom objected to dozens — sometimes close to 100 — of books in their districts.

#BookBans #Censorship #Education #Literacy #Extremism

Petersen is one of these serial filers….

The majority of school book objections center on titles by or about #LGBTQ individuals or people of color…. Petersen, though, has just one criterion by which she judges a book. Does it contain material that, under #Virginia #law, qualifies as sexually explicit, pornographic or obscene? Less than ⅓ of the titles she challenged have LGBTQ characters or protagonists of color….

#BookBans #Education #Literacy #Extremism #Infantilization #Heterosexism