Schools Aren’t Banning ‘ACOTAR’ Just Because It’s Horny

This is Fantasy Aisle, a monthly column from Jackie Jennings about everything related to horny dragon books. 

In early August, Utah banned 13 books in its public school classrooms and libraries, including Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series. According to PEN America, ACOTAR is in good company: Speculative fiction classics like The Lord of the Rings and A Game of Thrones have been subject to recent bans in other states. The justifications for these bans are unsurprising: violence, sex, etc. But schools aren’t banning Gimli and Sansa because of violence. Fantasy novels are getting banned in schools because the genre offers its reader the most dangerous thing the type of adults who ban books can imagine: A close examination (and usually repudiation) of the status quo. 

You might see that argument and say, “Jackie, ACOTAR is no Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” And you’d be correct! While faerie sex is fun and deeply important to some of us, it is still…you know…faerie sex. It is not the most high-minded, capital-L Literature out there. So why should we go to the mat for kids to be able to read chapter 55 (iykyk) in study hall? 

First of all, it’s 2024. We can say at this point in human evolution that kids learn about sex, no matter what. The youths are forever gonna figure out the truth of fingerbanging; we might as well have them read a whole, fun book to get to it! And to be honest, if students are reading truly anything that isn’t active hate speech or a Roblox tutorial, that should be considered a massive win for schools. But on top of that, when you consider what ACOTAR is actually about, I’d argue it’s a great narrative for teens.

ACOTAR is the story of a poor, disenfranchised young woman who escapes an abusive, tyrannical boyfriend; finds an egalitarian wonderland; learns to read; takes contraceptives and has sex on her terms—all while learning to fight and defend herself against anyone who would re-subjugate her. Sandwiched in between all that hot faerie sex are lessons about what control and abuse look like from the inside. And that’s something I want my kids to learn!

But if you’ve thought about book bans for more than 10 seconds, you know that banning books isn’t actually about “protecting” kids from sex or violence. If it was, why not ban The Red Badge of Courage or All Quiet on the Western Front? We’re OK with the actual horrors of WWI but not OK with Helm’s Deep, the big battle in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers? Also, really, what’s scarier for middle schoolers, reading A Game of Thrones or participating in active shooter drills?

Even engaging with the idea that book bans are about protecting kids requires more good faith than I have left for censors. Banning books is and always has been about controlling the flow of information and the dissemination of ideas that challenge the status quo. And that’s the case even when the settings are fantastical wonderlands and fictional worlds. (For further proof, keep in mind that the largest target of book bans in the U.S. are prisons, not schools.) 

Harry Potter is a series that is constantly challenged and frequently banned in classrooms across America. And it is (bigoted, mold-brained author notwithstanding) a book about kids taking on shitty establishment adults. The Lord of the Rings is about the collective strength of powerless people in the face of industrialized evil, little pot smoking tree huggers who save the world against all odds. Alternately, the horrifying worlds of 1984, and The Handmaid’s Tale (both of which are perennially banned somewhere in the U.S.) illuminate dark truths about our own world that are impossible to ignore. This, you would think, is the entire point of education: to be inspired to think critically about the world around you.

But a broader look at books banned in the past few years suggests the opposite. Besides fantasy novels, almost every banned or challenged book is about LGBTQ characters, antiracism, figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Emma Goldman—all subjects that tell kids that a better world is possible if they fight for it. (One Missouri school district also banned graphic novel versions of MacBeth and the Gettysburg Address, suggesting that these idiots think “graphic” can only mean “explicit.” It’s almost like the people banning books are…possibly…not very smart.)

There is nothing as dangerous to the dried up strictures of the status quo as a mind on fire. Fantasy and speculative fiction are pure imagination, the conceiving of worlds in which good ideas beat bad ones, kids can make a difference, and where you’re born doesn’t matter half as much as who you aspire to be. It’s the stuff of dreams and it’s exactly what kids should be reading at whatever age they’re able to read it. 

By the way, if you had to guess where the Google search “A Court of Thorns and Roses” was most popular in the last 30 days, would you say Utah?

It shouldn’t be surprising. After all, information famously wants to be free.