A village in England has been scandalized by their local phone box library being infiltrated by adult novels that are easily accessible to children.
According to the BBC, “salacious” books were found in the phone box where people can borrow books, and “erotic” novels were left within reach of children.
Chairman Ian Kitson said the issue was “no laughing matter” after the Hurstbourne Tarrant Parish Council met to address this issue and shared the following statement:
“We love our red phone box library on Church Street … but we don’t love salacious adult literature being left in there.
“So if whoever is doing so is reading this, please don’t keep leaving inappropriate books – the majority of visitors to the phone box are children. And some of them are tall enough to reach the shelves where the books for grown-ups are.
“Please find another outlet for your collection.”
When The Advertiser, who originally reported the story, visited the library kiosk, they found a range of books “from classic literature such as Jane Eyre to works by modern authors such as Kate Atkinson and Ian Rankin.”
They didn’t find any Fifty Shades-like books at the location, but there were titles like Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and Patricia Highsmith’s Carol/The Price of Salt.
Apparently, the culprit has been identified privately and “they aren’t very well thought of.”
Anyone who found “inappropriate” material in the library was told to throw it in the trash. The red phone box was purchased by the council back in 2019 and installed next to the village primary school, so it was a place that was very accessible to children.
Now, on the one hand, as a bad, feminist, child-free adult, I’m thinking of my own youth and easy access to the internet even in the late ’90s early 2000s. I’d read smut DBZ fanfiction by the time I was twelve. Hell, I was writing it by the, and naturally, it was terrible. Now was that a good thing? I don’t really know. I would say it was no more damaging than all the things I saw on television and media for my age group. Once I was in my teens, I read Anne Rice’s smutty erotica novels.
Children now have access to these things even more than I did. They are growing up with the internet in their hands and with a natural ability to navigate it. My nieces can use iPads.
I could understand wanting to make sure that hardcore pornographic material wasn’t there, but if it’s just a copy of the latest Alyssa Cole, then what is the harm being done? I don’t think they would be interested and would be turned off by the font size and lack of pictures.
It would help to know what titles were there, because I do think that reading Jane Eyre and unpacking the sexual politics of that book would be much harder than your average romance novel.
(via Boing Boing, image: Matt Cardy/Getty Images)
Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
