Left-leaning news outlets and organizations joined poet Amanda Gorman in falsely claiming that a Florida school banned her book.
Gorman denounced the school and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). The Biden administration joined Gorman in her claims, which led to book sales skyrocketing.
As The Blaze previously reported, the Florida school never banned Gorman’s book. No evidence has been provided that a single student attempted to access the book and was denied.
Responding to a question about Amanda Gorman's poem, Karine Jean-Pierre says "banning books is censorship."
It was NOT banned. pic.twitter.com/rO5kFeINRn
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 24, 2023
The school considered Gorman’s book valuable and historically accurate. It has made it clear that, while the book was moved from one shelf to another in the library, it remains available to all students, regardless of grade level.
Contrary to Gorman’s claims, DeSantis was not responsible for the book’s relocation, the complaint, or the school’s decision.
Although the Bob Graham Education Center in Miami Lakes and representatives from Miami-Dade County Public Schools recently confirmed that initial reports were false regarding the book’s relocation, many publications, including the Daily Beast, the Associated Press, Variety, the Guardian, Rolling Stone, and People magazine, have yet to correct their false reports.
According to The Blaze, various liberal publications claimed that Gorman’s book, “The Hill We Climb,” which contains the poem she read at President Joe Biden’s inauguration, was banned from a Miami school library.
Daily Salinas, a mother of two children at the school, had filed a complaint about Gorman’s book, and administrators responded, but the book was never banned nor removed from the library. It was instead moved to a different section of the school’s media center.
“No literature (books or poem) has been banned or removed,” Miami-Dade County Public Schools spokesperson Elmo Lugo said.
“It was determined at the school that ‘The Hill We Climb’ is better suited for middle school students and, it was shelved in the middle school section of the media center,” Lugo explained. “The book remains available in the media center.”
According to the School Materials Review Committee’s April 5, 2023, meeting, the committee determined that Gorman’s book “has educational value because of its historical significance. The vocabulary used in the poem was determined to be of value for middle school students.”
The Miami-Dade school district recently clarified that access to the book is not restricted for middle school students but instead “remains accessible to all students.”
