Cowardly DE school board cancels entire summer reading list over LGBT-inflected YA novel

The Cape Henlopen School Board nuked its entire summer reading list to keep kids from reading The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Emily M Danforth's acclaimed YA novel about a gay teenager coming of age in Montana.

Originally, the board was content to merely strike Cameron Post from the list, ignoring its own rules for challenging reading assignments, and figleafed its bigotry by insisting that the book's removal was due to profanity, rather than LGBT themes. When anti-censorship groups pointed out that many of the other books on the list contained profanity, it did away with the summer reading list altogether.

The Cape Henlopen summer reading list was drawn from the Delaware Library Association’s Blue Hen Book Award nominees for teen readers from 2014 and 2015. In addition to Cameron Post, the complete list of books that the school board decided it couldn’t be associated with is:

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March by John Lewis

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Boxers by Gene Luen Yang

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If You Find Me by Emily Murdoch

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More Than This by Patrick Ness

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Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

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The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

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Butter by Erin Jade Lange

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Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

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The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

Cape Henlopen Board Eliminates Entire Reading List in Dispute Over Cameron Post