In a rebuke, banned penguins flock back to a county’s schools

Under pressure of a federal court case, Florida’s Nassau County school district has agreed to return to school libraries a book about three penguins in New York’s Central Park Zoo, as well as 35 other books the district banned last year.

That reduces by 36 books the number banned under a Florida law that allows a single citizen’s complaint to unilaterally remove any book from the shelves of all of a county’s schools and gets the banned book onto a state-mandated list for other counties to act against as well.

Part way through the last school year, PEN America, a group that fights book bans, said Florida was responsible for 72% of all books pulled from the nation’s schools in that school year alone, with Florida banning 3,135 books. The books restored in Nassau County cut the banned total to 3,099 – just 3,099 too many.

Of course, the state’s leaders who created laws that make banning books a breeze for any activist point to the individual school districts that follow the state’s laws on book banning as leading the charge on books in schools that don’t follow whatever norms the book banners have. The state has deniability – though hardly plausible deniability.

The penguins book, “And Tango Makes Three,” is a case in point. It tells of two male penguins that raise a penguin chick. Had it been a male and a female penguin the book never would have ruffled a feather. But an all-male family? Ban it.

Last week, facing a lawsuit over the banning, the Nassau school board allowed the book back with a statement that Tango has no obscene material, is appropriate for all age groups, and has teaching value in school. It took legal pressure to do the right thing.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, who led the charge for the state laws to keep “wrong thinking” out of the schools’ libraries, in February had his office create a video called “Exposing the Book Ban Hoax” and issued a press release that Florida does not in fact ban books – it simply gave individual parents the power to do so at will and then requires listing of all banned books so parents in other counties can do the same.

The governor blamed liberals for making a mockery of the state’s book-banning powers, and the legislature promptly created a law that no one person can start a book ban that covers the entire school district more often than once a month – unless the book-banners have children in school, in which case they can do it as often as they like.

The bans have focused on books that talk about LGBTQ+ identities, that include characters of color, that talk about race and racism, and that include depictions of sexual experiences.

The penguins book falls into the LGBTQ+ category: the protagonists are male and therefore might corrupt the minds of school children. Maybe the district got away with the ban for months because penguins don’t have a lobbyist or a strong force backing them.

Mice and ducks, on the other hand, have so far been immune from a governor who for years battled mouse-and-duck headquarters in Orlando because the people at the helm spoke out against a DeSantis-backed law that opponents labeled “don’t say gay.” 

Yet the DeSantis forces had adequate cause to ban Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck comic books on the grounds that both duck and mouse protagonists are unmarried, have long-time female friends Minnie and Daisy, and live with multiple so-called “nephews” whose origins are murky. Should children be aware of such shady relationships? 

But in a ban, mouse and duck supporters would have laughed Florida’s leaders to despair – and Walt Disney’s successors can bring out armies of lobbyists to boot.

Despite the governor in his press release saying that “some people have abused this process in an effort to score cheap political points,” it’s the book banners who score cheap political points to the tune of 3,235 books banned in a six-month period, though some of them are rated modern classics. 

But it was only after an attempt to ban the Bible on the same criteria under which the other books were removed from schools that the governor admitted to book-banning excesses. 

The bans are all excessive. Don’t forget, to even get books onto the shelves in schools, professional librarians must approve them. But any parent – or in fact anyone at all once a month – can overrule the school professionals under Florida law.

Until that law is abolished, Florida will remain a mockery in a nation that values free speech and education above bigotry. Florida’s book ban is strictly Mickey Mouse.