Vicki Baggett is a veteran English teacher in Escambia County, Florida. Along with UK Column’s Diane Rasmussen McAdie, she is a member of the World Library Association.
In 2022, Vicki started to discover the extent of the sexually graphic content written for children and widely available in American public and school libraries. She has since been fighting to have them removed from the children’s collections through visible activism. In the US, where libraries and schools are governed differently compared to in the UK, she has read from the books at governing board meetings to make board members aware of what is being placed in front of children. Her activism, and related lawsuits, have been covered on many American mainstream media outlets such as The Washington Post, NPR, and her local ABC affiliate.
The American Library Association and her opponents attack her with the angle that she is “banning books” and promoting censorship, although there are no banned books in the US. As Diane mentioned, the American Library Association (ALA) runs well-funded political campaigns such as EveryLibrary, which “builds support for libraries and helps Americans fight book banning in their communities” and promotes the ALA’s ‘Freedom to Read Statement’.
Vicki discussed sexually graphic (and illegal, according to Florida law) content in the following books that she has found in children’s collections:
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower
- And Tango Makes Three
- Almost Adulting: All You Need to Know to Get It Together
- Queer: The Ultimate LGBT Guide for Teens
- Maestros Volume 1
Vicki runs a YouTube channel which “features particular books found in school and/or community libraries and primarily made available to minors”.
She also runs a website called SRCChallengedBooks. In an email to Diane, Vicki explained how her website documents ongoing book challenges in Florida. She wrote:
Click on "Link to Challenged Books" at the top. An entire spreadsheet will come up of books I (and some other citizens) have challenged in Santa Rosa County, Florida. If you scroll to #56, you will see Queer: The Ultimate LGBT Guide for Teens and can pull up the form I submitted for that book and the pages. The library tried to say they did not have it, but you can even see a picture of where it was listed in their library.
Look at #58, Almost Adulting. I mention that in the interview as well. This book is still waiting to go through a Review Process.
The last book, Maestros, with the picture of people engaged in sex, is on our Escambia County School District's website. Go here. This is a very extensive list. As I said, the first 100 books or so do not contain textual evidence. After that, the forms do. Look at #174. This is the book Maestros. If you notice, the book is waiting to go through a Review Committee. Why? This book obviously violates the law because of the nudity. Notice how my own district has to "black out" some of the pictures.
This exemplifies the time-consuming and emotionally draining work involved in challenging books.
UK Column has also interviewed other activists who are fighting to remove sexual content in school curricula and children’s library collections, including:
- Dan Kleinman (US),
- Kate Deeming (Scotland),
- Hugh McCarthy (Northern Ireland), and
- Cathy Mudge (England).