By Delayna Earley
The Island News
The Beaufort County Board of Education voted to restrict access to five more books during the Dec. 9 board meeting.
The books, “Milk and Honey” by Rupi Kapur, “Oryx and Crake” by Margaret Atwood, “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood, “November 9” by Colleen Hoover and “Perfect” by Ellen Hopkins, are now only allowed to be checked out from a Beaufort County School District (BCSD) high school library if a high school student takes a consent form home for their parents to sign giving them permission to check out the book.
The student may only check the book out after bringing the signed form back to the school.
This is the second time that Beaufort County has not immediately forwarded complaints made against books under Regulation 43-170 directly to the S.C. Board of Education, which is how the board has handled previously challenged instructional material that had already been challenged, gone through Beaufort’s book review process and returned to school libraries prior to the regulation being passed.
Per Regulation 43-170, a parent or legal guardian or a current Beaufort County student can submit up to five complaints per month regarding library books and instructional material that contain descriptions or images of sexual content.
The books reviewed during the most recent board meeting from Instructional Materials Complaint form filed by Beaufort County resident Elizabeth “Ivie” Szalai in February 2025.
Szalai no longer has a student enrolled in the district, but as her complaints were made before the end of the 2024-2025 school year, they can still be reviewed since they were filed while she still had a child enrolled in the district.
The Board conducted the portion of the meeting where the books were brought up for review much like they did during the first Special Called Meeting held in August 2025 where the board voted to restrict nine books.
Before bringing Szalai to the podium to present her arguments for removing the books from Beaufort’s school libraries, several people spoke during public comment regarding their feelings about the way that the Board of Education is now handling these complaints.
“I find it preposterous that books are the thing we believe our children need protection from,” said Beaufort County resident Mary Foster. “I wish we could spend this much time and energy being sure our classrooms are not overcrowded, providing the resources and materials our students and teachers need, feeding children who are hungry, keeping our schools safe. I could go on and on, but still here we are, still talking about removing books that our community has reviewed and wanted to leave in our schools.”
Szalai stood up and spoke during the public comment as well to defend why she wants to have the books removed from Beaufort County schools.
“It’s not about race. It’s not about sexual orientation, and it certainly is not about erasing anyone’s identity, no matter what others may claim,” Szalai said. “My efforts have never been to take away anyone’s voice, representation or history. This has always been about one thing, the content, and whether that content is appropriate for minors.”
She went on to say that Regulation 43-170 exists specifically to remove sexually explicit material, graphic sexual acts, pornographic descriptions and age-inappropriate depictions of sex from public schools where it can be accessed by minors.
Rob Kilgore, who is a resident of Savannah, Ga., but is an associate professor of English at University of South Carolina Beaufort, said, “The books have literary merit, and they have readers who really need them. Reducing these full and complex books to sex scenes misses the point.”
Arguing the point further, he brought up Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”, one of the books under review, which he said is widely regarded as a classic and is required reading in a lot of university courses and in a lot of high schools and the novel is about freedom, obligation and complex choices – but from the description of the book on the submitted forms, “the book is kind of trashy.”
Board members David Carr and Leah Frazier consistently voted to retain all the books and Alphonso Small voted to retain “Milk and Honey” by Rupi Kapur while the other board members voted to restrict all the books.
The books previously restricted in by the Board in August are “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, “The Freedom Writers Diary” by The Freedom Writers with Erin Gruwell, “Sold” by Patricia McCormick, “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, “The Lovely Bones” by Jay Asher, “The Art of Racing in the Rain” by Garth Stein, “The Duff” by Kody Keplinger, “Tilt” by Ellen Hopkins.
Six other titles had already been removed for being older or rarely checked out – “Shine” by Lauren Myracle, “Skin” by Donna Jo Napoli, “The Carnival at Bray” by Jessie Ann Foley, “Like a Love Story” by Abdi Nazemian, “The Infinite Moment of Us” by Lauren Myracle and “Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen.
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
