From the article: Green wrote a letter to the district’s all-Republican board urging its members to reconsider their decision about the book, which follows a teenage girl dealing with obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety while investigating a billionaire's disappearance.
As a longtime nerdfighter, someone who also struggles with anxiety, and at one point c-diff, TATWD is such an important novel to me. School board member Liza Bazarian is quoted as saying “Yes I am the board member who was most adamantly opposed to the material and in my statement… I clearly articulated that I am opposed to our culture’s romanticization of mental illness.” What a grotesque and uneducated take on this novel that helped me feel seen and understood for the firs time. Public education has enough problem without you.
In a beautiful irony they did allow F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. There's a fantastic Crash Course series on Gatsby by none other than r John Green.
This same board banned Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl in 2022 due to "use of multiple vulgarities, obscenities and content that is sexual in nature.” If you ever read the novel or even the back cover, you will understand how strange and creepy this statement is. There is nothing sexual in nature about this novel.
The nonprofit Freedom Readers is trying to fight this decision. If anyone has any other information on how to fight this, please let me know.