Education authorities in a US county have rejected claims a book by renowned Australian children's author Mem Fox has been banned from classrooms, saying the work has instead been "approved for our school libraries".
Fox yesterday defended the 1988 picture book Guess What? after it was reportedly included on a list of titles deemed inappropriate for students in Duval County, following a crackdown on school reading material across the state of Florida.
The work recounts the story of an old woman who is revealed to be a witch and who is, in one scene, depicted bathing "in an old laundry trough".
"She's washing herself, she's sort of sitting in this sink, you can't see any of her private parts at all," Fox told ABC Radio Adelaide.
"It's completely appropriate."
Activist group Florida Freedom to Read Project (FFTRP), which has been monitoring "censorship action" in school libraries across the state, included Guess What? on a list of works to have potentially fallen foul of Florida's new education laws, and Fox described any moves to ban it as "pitiful".
Duval County Public Schools has since rejected suggestions that had occurred, telling the ABC that reports suggesting it had been removed from shelves were "inaccurate".
"The referenced book has been approved for our school libraries," communications director Laureen Ricks said.
Another spokesperson for Duval County Public Schools said that only "21 books [have] so far removed from our schools as a result of this statutorily required process".
"Almost 25,000 books have been approved for classroom use," the spokesperson said.
"We have published extensively on our work to comply with state laws regarding book reviews."
But FFTRP maintained that Guess What? had been banned by Duval, even if it no longer was.
"The truth has made for inconvenient and embarrassing headlines, and now it seems Duval may reverse their decision as they have in the past with other titles," it said in a statement.
"While removing the erroneous 'pornographic' label they placed on this book is a huge win, the fact that it happened is a sad reflection of the state of our state."
The group — which said it had confirmed the book's initial removal from shelves "via a public records request to the Florida Department of Education" — has said the list of books approved in Duval is "ever-changing", making it difficult to "accurately account for all of the thousands of titles that have been made inaccessible, even if temporarily, in classroom libraries".
Fox: 'People don't know their history'
While Fox said she did not "give a damn either way" about whether her book was on the list or not, she added that she did "despair" when it came to America's education system.
"People don't know their history. This is what happened in Germany between the wars," she said.
The 21 books which Duval County Public Schools said had been removed from schools are identified on a "not-approved list" on the authority's website.
Among them are the popular fantasy novel Outlander, which spurred the hit TV show of the same name, and The Kite Runner.
According to the Duval County Public Schools website, books in school libraries "must be reviewed by a certified media specialist" to ensure compliance with new laws relating to "gender and racial ideology in books" which came into effect last year.
Among the criteria for deeming a book to be inappropriate is "material which could be considered instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity", which is "expressly forbidden in state law for students in grades K-3".
"Material should be appropriate for the grade level and age group for which the materials are used and made available," the website states.
"Material which could be considered pornographic is not allowed."
Banning books is currently a hot topic in America's so-called "cancel culture wars", with the political right and left regularly exchanging accusations of censoring content.
In March, Florida's Republican governor Ron DeSantis held a media conference to dispute the characterisation of the state's crackdown as a "book ban", labelling that description a "nasty hoax".
Fox herself recently condemned changes to Roald Dahl's books, in which passages relating to weight, mental health, gender and race were edited for future publication.
"How dare they, how dare they change anything that he wrote?" she said.
