For two and a half years, there has been a heated debate in Cameron, MO, over the books being provided to students with our tax dollars. In this article, we will explain why some people are so concerned. We will also share resources and explain how parents can research books and get a glimpse of their content to help you decide if you want your child to read them.
What exactly is in these books that has caused the uproar?
While the book fight is a national issue, we are going to concentrate on the books found in the Cameron R-1 schools. Our examples will be directed specifically to the CHS school and library, but the same steps can be applied to any school in almost any city or state.
While not all books found in the CHS library are as graphic, the most recent discovery is a perfect example of the content being promoted to children. The book Bag of Bones contains explicit descriptions of gang rape, incest, sexual nudity, sexual activities, self-harm and necrophilia.
The Cameron R-1 school district has secretly removed some of the books with explicit adult content. You can read about that in the article titled “Cameron R-1 school district sees reason and begins removing explicit books.”
The resource provided to parents by the Cameron R-1 school district
The Cameron R-1 school district has responded to concerns over these books by providing access to the online resource. It can be accessed at GoFollett.com by anyone and allows you to search a specific school’s library and get descriptions of the books found there.
That sounds helpful, but the descriptions lack information useful to parents in deciding if a book’s content is appropriate for their child. Let us use Bag of Bones as an example. In Destiny, you will find the following description of this adult book—the resource the school board expects parents to use to make informed decisions about whether their child should read it:
Novelist Mike Noonan, still grieving the death of his wife after four years, retreats to Sara Laughs, his isolated summer home, but the peace he is seeking slips even further from his grasp when he finds the community in the grip of a powerful millionaire, and his hideaway becomes the site of ghostly visitations.
Through the website RatedBooks, we get a better glimpse of what you can truly expect to find in this book’s pages. The following summary is taken from RatedBooks:
Summary of Concerns
This book contains; alcohol, alternate gender/sexual ideologies, anxiety/mental illness, bullying, dark content, death/grief, deception, derogatory terms, drugs, dubious consent, gang rape, gore, horror, incest, murder, necrophilia (invision/nightmares), obscene/explicit
sexual activities/sexual nudity, potentially patently offensive content, potentially prurient content, profanity, racism, self-harm, sexism, suicidal thoughts, and violence (graphic).
There is a vast difference between the information provided in the two resources, yet the school district and board of education only tell you about and encourage you to utilize Destiny.
More problems with Destiny
Destiny does indicate to parents which books have been restricted by the school district. One example is the book The Bluest Eye. As you can see in the screenshot below, this book is restricted.
Cameron R-1 doesn’t provide parents enough information to make an informed decision
You can see next to the “Call #” in the screenshot that the district has restricted this book and requires parental approval for students to check it out. What you do not see is the reason why the book was restricted. If you go to BookLooks, you will find a link to the content. Be forewarned: this book includes incest and molestation with a graphic first-person description of the pleasure a father feels as he impregnates his preteen daughter. How does the description in Destiny compare to BookLooks, and which resource should the school district be encouraging parents to use?
A three-person book review committee voted to restrict this book, but the district refuses to tell us why. Why then does the district refuse to allow a true informed decision by advising the public what kind of content is in these books? The committee knows what content is in this book; it is arguably what caused them to restrict it to only students above the age of 18. Why the secretary and lack of transparency?
How to determine if the books are right for your child
Unfortunately, there is no universal book rating system that makes this process easy for concerned parents. It will require effort on your part because the school district does not take responsibility for vetting the content they provide to your children. There are more than 30,000 books in the Cameron school district, and parents are left to research the content themselves.
There are numerous websites that maintain a list of concerning books which are easy to find. This website contains a list of books specific to the Cameron school district on our Dirty Book Page. We recommend copying the title you want to research and then logging into the Destiny Discover page by selecting your state, the school district, and finally the specific school within that district as shown below. Once you confirm the book is in your library, proceed to RatedBooks and see if they have a record of the book. Not every book is on RatedBooks.
How to proceed after finding a book you do not want your child to read
By default, any of the 40-some books the district has restricted are not available to students unless they are 18 years old. Unfortunately, we have reported upwards of 200 books to the district, and not everything with sexually explicit content is being restricted by the book review committee. If you find a book that isn’t restricted by the district, you can complete the district’s book restriction form. But be forewarned: you still need to monitor what books the district allows your child to access. In February of this year, the district was caught providing restricted books to students without parental consent during a Book Tasting event. Allegations were made that a school district employee completed parental consent forms so a child could read the restricted book The Hate You Give. As Ronald Reagan once said, trust but verify. You can track what books your student reads through Destiny—be sure to ask the school for help in accessing those records.
The erosion of parental rights in education in the Cameron school district
It was long ago established that parents have the absolute right to direct the education of their children. I contend that the Cameron R-1 school district is doing an end run around those rights by knowingly providing explicit adult content to our children without informing the public. This is especially true for the books the school’s book review committee has reviewed and restricted.
The board of education is derelict in its responsibility to provide oversight and inform the community
During board meetings where the Cameron R-1 school district was provided the recommendations of the book review committee, they failed to ask any questions or even vote to accept the committee’s recommendations. It would have been reasonable to ask questions such as why books were restricted or what guidelines the committee used to make decisions. The board failed in every instance to ask questions, demand transparency for the book review process, or take any vote. The board entirely abdicated its responsibilities to the community and refused to provide any oversight.
Actions the school district and board should take to inform and empower parents
To properly inform and empower parents, the Cameron R-1 school district and board should:
- Provide detailed content warnings alongside book descriptions in Destiny Discover
- Publish clear criteria used by the book review committee for restricting materials
- Ensure transparent communication about why specific books are restricted
- Implement proper oversight procedures to prevent unauthorized access to restricted materials
- Respect parental rights by making the review process more accessible, transparent and informative
- Create policy that strengthens parental rights and allows a formal book challenge process
Parents deserve to make truly informed decisions about their children’s reading materials. The current system falls short of providing the transparency and information parents need to exercise their fundamental right to guide their children’s education.
In a shocking turn of events, the Cameron R-1 school district has been quietly removing challenged books from the high school library. These books that have been removed were previously challenged under a now rescinded policy for their “graphic” and “sexually explicit content”. A list of those challenged books can be found on our Dirty Book List.
Before I get too far into this article I would like to extend my gratitude to the Cameron R-1 school district and its board of education. It took more than 2 years, but they appear to have finally taken this explicit adult content seriously. I pray this is them taking steps to restore some good old fashioned family values to our small rural Missouri community. Please take the time to let them know you appreciate that they’re taking steps to protect our children and for beginning to restore parental rights.
The list of books we believe to have been removed
The following 8 books were among the first 80 books that were challenged. Some of these books we physically held in our hands, some we found through the district provided Destiny access. The district initially confirmed these books were in the district. Our search today shows the books mentioned below are no longer present in the Cameron R-1 school districts high school library.
We will provide a link to a page for each of these books where you will find information about the book. That page includes additional links with passages where you can read the content. In one case, for the book Lucky, you will also find a link to video with some of its passages being read to the board in March of 2023. Two years later it appears that horrible content is no longer in our public schools.
WARNING !! The text and video in the following itemized links contain explicit adult content that is NOT appropriate for children.
- Lucky by Alice Seabold- informational link – Video link
- Lovely Bones by Alice Seabold- informational link
- Like a Love Story by Nazemian- informational link
- Friday by Robert Heinlein – informational link
- Fallout by Ellen Hopkins- informational link
- Smoke by Ellen Hopkins – informational link
- The Duff by Kody Keplinger – informational link
- Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott – informational link
- Maus by Art Spiegelman – informational link (We believe there were two of them, books 1 and 2 but cannot confirm)
How to search the library contents online
If you would like to confirm the absence of these books, or to see what other books are available in the Cameron high school library you can search for free using Go Follett. Be sure to compare the description of the books you will find there to descriptions in the links above.
Were other books removed?
Excellent question. We have submitted a Missouri sunshine law request seeking a full list of books that have been removed from the high school library. We are awaiting for the district to respond and provide us with those records. There will be an updated article once we receive and comb through those records. We hope to be able to provide you with a complete list of all the books that have been removed.
Why were the books removed?
The justification for the removal of these books is not yet clear. At least 3 of the books, The DUFF, Lucky and Looking for Alaska were voted on by the book review committee to retain, with restrictions. If or when a new vote was taken is unclear. The link to the last found book review committee update is from the June 2024 school board meeting. It is a document from the districts provider and will likely save to your downloads folder.
Because we were unclear about why these books were removed we included in our sunshine law request the documents that show the vote(s) by the committee to remove these books and any cited justification or cause for their removal. Once we receive and process those sunshine law requests we will be sure to provide an update.
Thank you, Cameron R-1 schools board of education
I would like to personally extend my sincere gratitude for your courage in finally taking a stand to protect our children and starting a much needed return to family values and morality in our community. I hope you will consider providing an update at next weeks school board meeting regarding this matter. It is of significant interest to the community.
Please let us know how you’re deciding which books needed to be removed and your plans moving forward for further restrictions or removals. Our children are our greatest treasure, thank you for recognizing they needed protected from harmful sexually explicit content. I know it has been a stressful and difficult path, but those who do the right thing when its hard should be celebrated, not ridiculed.
At the June 2025 Cameron R-1 school district school board meeting, a concerned resident addressed the school board about yet another book. After giving a much needed content warning, Mr. Gilbert reads passages from the book Identical, which is found in the high school library, from the book Identical. The 7 person school board didn’t appear concerned by the content.
What is in that book that causes concern
The passages Mr Gilbert read includes graphic details of a father grooming and then involving one of his identical daughters in a sex act. Even when those passages were described in medical terms the local Cameron paper refused to publish that letter to the editor. He denied it because it was too graphic.
Here is the video of that address to the board. For those of you who would like to confirm this content is in the book we will provide the Rated Books link to the book Identical.
In a recent post on Facebook by Cameron R-1 School board candidate Michael Barlow responds to questions asked by the local Cameron Newspapers. One of the questions asked of all the school board candidates relates to the 2 year battle over sexually explicit books in the Cameron R-1 public school libraries.
The response from Mr. Barlow highlights one of the issues we have been vocal about over the past 2 years. I have no doubt Mr Barlow believes those things, but his belief is based on a lack of information from the Cameron R-1 schools. There is a serious lack of transparency in the school district and the community simply doesn’t know the reality of our book fight with the school.
In his statement, which you can read in its entirety HERE, Michael said the following about how he believes the book issue will be handled moving forward.
“A legitimate concern has been brought forward about content in books. My belief is this will continue to be identified, addressed, and corrected by the school district.” – Michael Barlow for Cameron School Board
What the Cameron community doesn’t know, the school superintendent knew 6 months before we found and went public with the first book challenges these books were there. The district knew, had the opportunity to quietly remove them, and did nothing. Matt Robinson, school superintendent, ignored the issue and waited for parents or the community to figure it out. How do we know this? Public records obtained through a Missouri Sunshine Law request.
The following image was 
obtained through a public records request. This email was sent by Matt Robinson to the entire boards of education. Go to the last paragraph and read the last two sentences. Matt Robinson told the board of education “I sat down with all librarians in August and shared by thoughts on controversial books and shared our day is coming, it’s only a matter of time. Well, our day arrived last Thursday.” – Cameron R-1 school superintendent
The Cameron R-1 School district knew we had abhorrent and deviant sexually explicit books in our school libraries. They also knew they had books with content that was of concern and would likely be challenged. Children were checking out and reading these books while the problem was ignored. Instead of being proactive and getting ahead of the issue, they did nothing and waited for these sexually explicit books to be discovered by someone else. They knew these books were in our libraries and chose to do NOTHING.
The Cameron community largely believes the school district is addressing the book issue. Because of a lack of transparency by the school district and the board of education the community doesn’t know the truth of the matter. Every step taken by the Cameron school district relating to the sexually explicit and other adult content in these books has been reactive.
The following is a bulleted list of things I do not believe the community knows about the book issue, the Cameron R-1 school district and the board of education.
- The school district has no plan for the district to identify any other remaining books with adult content. They are relying on parents and the community to find them.
- Despite relying on the community to identify books with adult content, the district and board refuse to allow the community access to the libraries to inspect books. Parents are not allowed to see the books being provided to their children.
- The Cameron school district and board of education have ignored every one of our questions about the educational value or curriculum objective of these books.
- The school and board president have ignored every request for a community engagement meeting to talk about the book issue. They do NOT want to be on the record talking about this.
- The “book review committee” meets in secret and keeps no records of any kind.
- The procedure used by the book review committee to determine if a book needs to be restricted is also secret. They refuse to provide any documents.
- The reason a book has been restricted by the book review committee is also a secret. The school will not tell the community what content is on those restricted books.
- Once a book has been restricted, the school doesn’t share any information with parents that would empower us to determine if we want our children to read these books. They have used tax payer resources to pay employees to review these books. Why not document the process and inform the public?
- there is no policy that allows a parent or tax payer to challenge a book. Most every other Missouri school has that policy.
- unlike every other school in our area, Cameron has no policy that would allow a member of the community to challenge a decision by the book review committee and ask the school board to take a vote and make the final decision.
- Cameron did have both of those policies in place but rescinded them both when I challenged the decisions of the first book review committees.
- Cameron does not have a policy that covers the selection of library books. It is entirely at the discretion of the librarian. This is likely why we have so many inappropriate books in Cameron.
- In two years, the Cameron school district and board of education have NEVER addressed the community or publicly talked about what kind of books are appropriate for our district.
- The only public responses by the board of education is to cite “diversity”. Do they truly believe that “diversity” requires we provide abhorrent content to children?
- The Cameron school board doesn’t like the book issue, so they changed policy and limit us to discussing books once every 3 months. Even with new information relevant to the book topic, the board refuses.
Here is the video from the Cameron R-1 school districts board of education meeting from December 19, 2023. There are time stamps in the description for the video. There was an update in this video to the ongoing book fight.
Mrs Debbie Cox addresses the Cameron school districts board of education to talk about the sexually explicit books they are making available to students in the school libraries. Some of those books violate Missouri law and statute 573.550, prohibition against schools providing sexually explicit content to minors.
In the Cameron high school library, the process and reason behind the sexually explicit books which have been added to the school libraries makes sense when you know the players behind the scenes. Or in this instance, it is the state library association known as MASL. It is the position of this organization that children should be permitted to read any content they want to read.
Listen to this interview with the President of the Missouri Association of School Librarians (MASL) and then ask yourself, should an organization with these stated goals and opinions about parents be creating our guidelines on what content will be made available to children?
Recently a local Cameron resident, Mr Dan Landi, shared with me a book he found in the Cameron high school library. He found it with the school districts online book catalog through the school districts website. The book was the graphic novel version of Slaughterhouse Five. This was of particular interest because it contains pictures of people having sex, making it illegal for school to provide to children under Missouri statute 573.550. I confirmed the book showed as being in the online catalog through the resource Go Follett by selecting the state and appropriate school. I was able to find it in the CHS library catalog.
I found a website dedicated to the book fight in the Rockwood, MO, school district called Library Exposed. Searching their website I was able to see some of the images found in the book Slaughterhouse Five. I was able to determine why MO schools were pulling it. I will link directly to that page for the adults who want to be informed.
That got me curious, I wondered how many other books were in Cameron high school that had been pulled from Missouri schools for containing porn, as defined by Missouri statute 573.550. A quick internet search and I found an article from November of 2022 which said 300 books had been banned in Missouri because of the then newly implemented law. The article linked to a google document where there is a list of books and their authors which have been removed by various Missouri school district. A little copy and paste and I was able to see how many of those books still showed up in the Cameron high school library. To my dismay, I found 20 books in the Cameron high school library which appear other schools in Missouri determined were sexually explicit enough to remove . Twenty books which other Missouri school districts pulled from their shelves because they contained pictures which they were concerned would cause them to be in violation of Missouri law prohibiting schools from providing sexually explicit books to children.
In a previous blog entry, I discussed the graphic novel book Watchmen. I showed some of the content from that book, also found on the Library Exposed website. I include a video in that blog entry where I show the content and relevant statutes. You can find the blog post and video at Graphic novel Watchmen.
The image to the right is from a screen shot taken of the high school library catalog which shows Watchmen was in the library and was checked out to a Cameron high school student.
We obtained records from March 3, 2023 from the Cameron school district through Missouri Sunshine Law requests that show Robinson informed the board of education by email about a conversation he had with all the district librarians in August of 2022. He told the board “I sat down with all librarians in August and shared my thoughts on controversial books and shared that our day is coming, it’s only a matter of time.” That indicates he knew there were books that would concern parents and members of the community. Did they know about these books then? Why didn’t they take steps in August to avoid this issue? Has their day arrived? Hopefully it has and this means these books will finally be removed.
In April of 2023, Andi Lockridge, the attorney who sits on the Cameron board of education, asked the superintendent Matt Robinson during that months board of education meeting if any of those books, as defined by the statute she read aloud, were in the Cameron school district. He responded by shaking his head and said “no”. You can watch a recording of that board meeting that was live streamed on Citizen Observer Facebook page. The relevant portion begins around the 46 minute and 20 second mark.
Here is the current list of books which we found on the library catalog for the Cameron high school.
- Autopsies by Jeffrey Gary
- The Dark Knight series by Frank Miller
- Brazen:Rebel Ladies who rocked the world by Penelope Bagieu
- Grass by Gendry-Kim
- Himawari House by Harmony Becker
- How It All Blew Up by Arvin Ahmadi
- Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
- Red Rising by Pierce Brown
- Salughterhouse Five graphic novel by Vonnegut
- Speak the graphic novel by Laurie Anderson
- Spinning by Tillie Walden
- The Best We Can Do by Thi Bui
- The Giver by Craig Russell
- The Sacrafice of Darkness by Roxane Gay
- Watchmen by Allen Moore
Here is an example of the content being made available to children as young as 14 in the high school library in Cameron, Missouri. The school district and the board of education know this content is there but refuse to even require parental approval for a child to check it out. They know this content is in the hands of children but REFUSE to take any steps to protect them.
Give this a listen and then try to convince me how this is appropriate for children.
In response to parents and community members concerns about the sexually explicit adult content in books found inside the Cameron high school, the superintendent and board of education decided to send all the parents “book restriction forms”. Parents are responsible for completing the form with the book title and author of every book they do not want their children to read, and to submit it to the school librarian. The librarian will then insure that child does not check out any of those books. Sounds good, right?
Unfortunately, there is no good tool for parents to use to identify the books in the library that contain sexually explicit adult content, or any other number of concerning topics. It is the sole responsibility of the parents to know the content of more than 33,000 books in order to restrict their child from reading books each parent deems inappropriate.
At a board of education meeting in August, the board members discussed the book restriction form and suggested we use a catalog search by topic or subject to find books we don’t want our children to read. What they didn’t tell you, searching the catalog by topic or subject isn’t very effective. We use the book The Bluest Eye and the Cameron school districts online book catalog for the high school to make this point.
If you are not familiar with the content of the book The Bluest Eye, you read the concerning content on Book Looks or hear a reading of some of its passages on our Facebook page. The book tells of the molestation of a 12 year old girl from the perspective of the man who is assaulting her. It is dark, and difficult to read. With that information, we will show the subjects listed in the catalog for this book in the video below. You will see why what the district is proposing, that parents are responsible for finding the content they added to our libraries, isn’t a viable option.
There just aren’t any good tools for parents to identify the concerning books. The school district knows this, but they want to say they’ve done something. They have, they’ve passed their responsibility for these books to the parents.