Butts: the origin story of a Texas book ban

Updated April 14, 2023, to show Llano County libraries remaining open pending further action

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Given that I live in a blood-red state, book bans are a recurring event. They arouse a few seconds of outrage. Then it's on to the next mass shooting, or the next criminal indictment of our state's chief legal officer, or whatever near-criminal viciousness our elected officials are up to.

It took a threat by officials of the small Central Texas county of Llano to really shake me up. At 3 p.m. on Thursday, April 13, 2023, the county's governing body will meet to decide whether to close every public library in the county -- all three of them -- rather than follow a judge's order to reinstate 12 books the county had banned.

Maybe the threat of library closings awakened memories from the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when libraries and many other facilities in my home county of Dallas closed. Or maybe those memories stemmed from growing up in a small rural county like Llano with only a single public library. (At that time, the entire library was housed in an obscure corner of the county courthouse basement, although it's since been upgraded to an abandoned storefront.)

I wondered what books could be horrific enough to justify closing the entire library system of Llano County. And was astonished to find the entire uproar started with a small volume entitled, My Butt Is So Noisy!.

Yes, it was a book which Amazon rates as "children's humor," appropriate for ages 4-8, that prompted Llano County real estate agent Bonnie Wallace to develop a spreadsheet of books she considered "inappropriate."

Image by Amy from Pixabay

Ms. Wallace would go on to send the Llano County commissioners court judge an email about the issue, using the subject line "Pornographic Filth at the Llano County Libraries."

According to The New York Times Magazine, Ms. Wallace, who is active in her local Methodist church, ended the email with, "May God protect our children from this FILTH." 

(In the interests of full disclosure, I am also an active member of a Methodist church. But as far as I, a layperson, can determine, none of the iterations of Methodism have doctrinal issues with butts.)

Llano County began short-term library closures, ordering librarians to scour their shelves for books that might be considered inappropriate for children barely old enough to read at all. Its county commissioners court, the governing body of Texas counties, dissolved the Llano County library board and appointed a new one that included people who had initially worked on the butt book ban. After community members and librarians started attending the new library board's meeting, the county closed those meetings to the public.

Eventually, the county decided on a list of books for children and young adults, including those written as part of a series, to be removed permanently. Seven county residents sued in protest, and late last month, a federal judge ordered the books to be reinstated.

After the county commissioners court announced that its Thursday, April 13, special meeting would consider whether to "continue or cease operations of the current physical Llano County library system pending further guidance from the Federal Courts" dozens of residents -- more than the meeting place could hold -- showed up to plead both for and against the library closure. 

In response, the commissioners court went into closed session. County Judge Ron Cunningham emerged shortly afterward to announce that the libraries would remain open for the time being. The next scheduled court hearing in the case is April 27 for an appearance before a federal judge to determine why the suit's defendants, including Cunningham, failed to appear for deposition. The case so far has cost the county with a population of slightly more than 21,000 approximately $100,000 in legal expenses. Final action is expected in October 2023.

Perhaps to demonstrate that the county commissioners are not merely humorless asses, besides the potty volumes, the banned books include others dealing with adolescent sexuality, LBGTQ issues, and race.

The list includes:

• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson
• They Called Themselves the KKK: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group, by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
• Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgendered) Teen, by Jazz Jennings
• Spinning, by Tillie Walden
• In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak
• It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health, by Robbie H. Harris
• My Butt is So Noisy!, I Broke My Butt!, and I Need a New Butt, by Dawn McMillan
• Larry the Farting Leprechaun, Gary the Goose and His Gas on the Loose, Freddie the Farting Snowman, and Harvey the Heart Has Too Many Farts, by Jane Bexley
• Shine, by Lauren Myracle
• Under the Moon: A Catwoman Tale, by Lauren Myracle
• Gabi, a Girl in Pieces, by Isabel Quintero
• Freakboy, by Kristin Elizabeth Clark

All of these, with the exception of the farting books, are available from the Dallas Public Library System. And all are, of course, on Amazon.

Because the books are so readily available, I wondered what the point was of banning them until I realized they're only available for those with internet access, credit cards, and an address online booksellers can ship them to. Or for those who already have a TexShare Card allowing them to access other libraries in the state, and transportation to those other libraries.

In other words, the banned books are not accessible outside Llano County to toddlers, or elementary schoolers, or even teens. The point of threatening to shut down the library system is to keep the banned books out of the hands of those most in need of them.

And really, it's not just about kids.

The Llano County libraries, like most in this country, offer a lot more than books, including internet access and computer use, Wi-Fi hotspots, and meeting rooms for community gatherings. Including meetings such as those in which a group first began to question why kids could read about butts.