A Nashville area The school district voted this week to remove a transgender book for children from school libraries after questions were raised about the book’s contents during last month’s board meeting.
During the public comment section at the Murfreesboro City School Board meeting on Dec. 10, pastor and activist John K. Amanchukwu the district called out because the picture book “It Feels Good to Be Yourself” is on the shelves of Bradley Academy, an elementary school that serves students in kindergarten through sixth grade in the district.
The book introduces the concept of gender identity to readers aged four and up, according to its description.
“Some people are boys. Some people are girls. Some people are both, neither, or somewhere in between,” it says.
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A school district in Tennessee voted Tuesday to remove a transgender children’s book from its library shelves. (Getty Images)
The book tells the story of “Ruthie,” a transgender girl, and introduces terms like “cisgender” and “nonbinary” to explain different gender identities to younger readers.
After Amanchukwu began reading from the book, board chairman Butch Campbell objected to the pastor bringing up the book during the meeting. He said he violated the rules of only bringing up agenda items during the public comment section.
The pastor kept reading from the book, calling the book’s message about the existence of more than two genders “a lie” and citing the Book of Genesis.
After the board tried for about two minutes to get Amanchukwu to stop speaking, the meeting was forced to recess.
Pastor John Amanchukwu of North Carolina previously spoke at a Wake County School Board meeting. (Wake County School Board/Screenshot)
At the school board of January 14 meeting this weekthe board announced that the transgender-themed book had been reviewed by a committee of staff and parents, who recommended that the book be removed.
One board member said the book had been on the shelves since 2022 and had never been checked out.
Before they held a vote, Vice Chair Amanda Moore accused Amanchukwu of putting on a “show” to bring the book to the district’s attention.
Amanchukwu is a contributor to Turning Point USA and travels around the country to various school board meetings to draw attention to explicit books in school libraries.
“This person had announced his visit to us for weeks before he came. Never contacted the school, never contacted the main office and never contacted this board, even though he came to us and shouted at us about this dangerous book that we had on the shelf,” Vice President Amanda Moore said before the board voted to remove the book from library shelves.
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A child reads a book at the Santa Clarita City Public Library, Valencia, in Santa Clarita, California, USA, on Sunday, November 1, 2015. (Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Amanchukwu responded to the board’s decision and comments in a statement Fox News digital.
“If my commitment to protecting children from content that mentally rapes them is a ‘show’… I pray that this ‘show’ becomes bigger for the sake of the least of these, in 2025,” Amanchukwu said.
He quoted Proverbs 22:6, which says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
“We are called to educate children, not ruin them,” his statement continued. “I salute the board members for using common sense in governing the pedagogy of students in Murfreesboro City Schools.”
This month, a Minnesota school district removed a transgender book from an elementary school library after pressure from a concerned parent.
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Rochester Public Schools said it has pulled the 2022 book, “The Rainbow Parade” by Emily Neilson, from its books. primary school media center last month after a Franklin Elementary School parent raised concerns about nude illustrations in the book.
