Romance novelist Nora Roberts has been caught up in the conservative effort to ban books from Florida schools, an action she describes as “shocking.”
Eight of her books were removed from school library shelves in Martin County, Fla., following a complaint.
“All of it is shocking,” Roberts told The Washington Post. “If you don’t want your teenager reading this book, that’s your right as a mom — and good luck with that. But you don’t have the right to say nobody’s kid can read this book.”
A co-founder of book-banning activist group Moms for Liberty told “CBS Sunday Morning” last weekend that books containing “incest, pedophilia, rape” or “pornography” should be banned from schools.
A slew of notable authors have been taken off some shelves in the state, including Judy Blume, Toni Morrison and James Patterson.
A study from the American Library Association found that there were 1,269 attempts to ban books across the country last year, impacting 2,571 titles, nearly twice as many as 2021.
A Martin County Moms for Liberty activist, Julie Marshall, said Roberts’s books are inherently not appropriate for schools because they are romance novels, an explanation provided to the Post by the Florida Freedom to Read Project.
“I’m surprised that they wouldn’t want teenagers to read about healthy relationships that are monogamous, consensual, healthy and end up in marriage,” Roberts said about her books.