A source told us over the summer that they believe the Iowa City School District and Iowa City Public Library are attempting to get around Iowa law by using the public library’s “Bookmobile” to make books available at elementary schools that are prohibited by law from being offered in the school library itself.
We’re working to find out how much of this is true. However, after a search of the Bookmobile’s catalog, we found a number of books that certainly would be prohibited from being in Iowa elementary schools due to Senate File 496 — which required books in Iowa schools to be age-appropriate and prohibited instruction on sexuality and gender identity in grades K-6.
On Monday, we highlighted the book “Grandad’s Pride.” Read about that here.
On Tuesday, we highlighted the book “If You’re A Drag Queen and You Know It.” Read about that here.
Today we want to tell you about a book called “Hooray for He, She, Ze, and They! What Are Your Pronouns Today?” This book is in the Bookmobile’s catalog:
This book targets readers 4-8 years old and is written at a Pre-K grade level.
As the title suggests, the children’s book features a number of characters who have “preferred pronouns.” The first character introduced, for example, has the pronouns “they/them.”
Pronouns, the book claims, tell people about our gender. And it defines gender as “that tingly feeling inside that tells you who you are and how you want to express yourself to the world.”
Among the common pronouns like he, she and they, the book includes ze, hir, fae and per.
“You can choose your own pronouns. Use whichever feels right to you,” the book states. “Because the right pronouns feel super-cool-totally-awesome-amazingly-wonderful, just like you!”
The author of the book wrote an article on a website called Gays With Kids, encouraging the book for all families. The author said the aim of the book is to connect language with emotions and feelings instead of teaching children what pronouns are.
The group Gays Against Groomers posted a warning about the book, telling people to “keep this gender INSANITY away from children!”
One Twitter user wrote:
“Every day I’m more and more grateful I have the opportunity to homeschool my children. My youngest especially wouldn’t be able to protect himself from this indoctrination. He’d believe every word without question because a ‘teacher’ told it to him.”
As mentioned above, Iowa law prohibits instruction on gender identity for students in grades K-6.
Here is the weekly schedule for the “Bookmobile” in Iowa City:
