An entire library board in North Carolina has been dissolved after controversy over a single children’s book featuring a trans character. The Randolph County Board of Commissioners voted 3–2 earlier this week to disband its nine-member library board following backlash over Call Me Max, a picture book about a young trans boy. County spokesperson Amy Rudisill said about 40 people addressed commissioners before the vote.
Call Me Max, written by Stonewall award–winning author Kyle Lukoff, who is trans, was shelved in the children’s section. Lukoff has described it as a “sweet and age-appropriate introduction to what it means to be transgender.” The dispute began when a patron asked that the book be moved or placed higher on the shelves. When the library board denied that request in October, county commissioners stepped in, ultimately dissolving the board.
Conservative activist Tim Fitzgerald of the North Carolina Values Coalition argued the book “teaches children that their parents may be wrong about their gender, and that their gender is actually whatever they feel it is…Planting this lie in a child’s mind at a young age can lead them down a harmful path of social and medical transitioning.” PEN America’s Kasey Meehan called the move extreme. She said, “It’s a pretty dramatic response to wanting to have diverse and inclusive books on shelves.”
Lukoff responded, saying, “Policies can be helpful, but this is ultimately a question of power… If there are people in power who simply believe trans people don’t belong in their communities or the world at large, they will simply twist those policies to try and make it a reality.”
