Jennifer Williams’ two young daughters have looked forward to the Johnson County Library summer reading program every year. But not anymore – not after her 13-year-old checked out a book with a graphic sex killing in the first few pages.

In When We Were Magic, a girl describes the bloody aftermath of a sexual encounter in which the boy’s penis explodes and he dies.

“She’s, like, mortified,” Williams says of her oldest of two daughters. “‘Mom, this book is about murder and sex, and they talk about his d— exploding.’ I said what? I mean, I couldn’t even wrap my head around this.”

Now that Williams has indeed wrapped her head around it, she considers it a wrap on her family’s recreational reading from the suburban Kansas City Johnson County Library.

“Well, as a parent, we’re returning every book we have checked out and we are done with that library. It’s sad to say, because there’s some good resources. And maybe from time to time we’ll use them for strictly nonfiction items for research that we need, but this fiction is out of control. 

“There’s no way to know what you’ve read until you read it, and you can’t undo that. You can’t unsee the images in your mind.”

The Heartlander has reported on other books for minors that have alarmed Johnson County parents. In each case a library spokesperson has said the library’s collection policy supports “a wide variety of materials to support a wide variety of interests within our community,” and that the library doesn’t take a stance on the appropriateness of even books for the youngest of children.

However, in this case the library has indeed taken a stance: It is part of the library’s summer reading program, and features books recommended for youths by the library staff. When We Were Magic is one of them.

“It’s not only that it was just a random book on the shelf, but it’s under what they call a staff-created list – a program that children look forward to every year,” Williams says. “So, they know they’re going to pick up one of these books, as opposed to the odds of them just getting one randomly off of the shelf. They’re being promoted.”

Johnson County Commissioner Charlotte O’Hara says she plans to read excerpts from the book at next Thursday’s commission meeting.

“With pornography addiction rampant in our culture, why is Johnson County Library recommending such highly sexualized and violent content to our children?” the commissioner asks in a statement to The Heartlander. “It is a sad state of affairs when parents cannot trust allowing their children to go to our county libraries without fear of them coming in contact with extremely inappropriate material.”

Kansas state Sen. Mike Thompson wants this addressed at the state level, as Missouri has done with Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s new rule requiring libraries to enact policies and take actions to keep age-inappropriate materials away from children — at the risk of having their funding cut if they don’t.

“I think that’s a really good idea,” Thompson says. “Often we’ll look at other states and what they’re doing that is succeeding and use that as a guide. And I think that’s a very good way to look at it. In fact, we may have to just take a peek at that bill, what Missouri’s done. And if we need to authorize the Secretary of State to be able to do something like that, then so be it. I think it’s a good idea. Some people might call that a book ban. But that’s not a book ban. It’s just common sense. It’s age-inappropriate.

“Is getting out of control. People wonder why our kids are confused, depressed, why their test scores are going down. This is all a part of it. They’re being distracted from being kids. We didn’t have that when I was growing up.

“I’ve been disturbed by this for quite some time. There are a lot of people concerned about this. It’s proliferating. Parents I know are going to these school boards and objecting, or objecting to these libraries, and they’re just not being listened to. And at some point you’ve got to say, well, what do we do to stop it? Here we are, with a situation where schools and libraries who offer this type of material are circumventing the parents’ rights to make a decision about what their kids are exposed to. And I think it’s very much premature to allow these kids to see this sort of stuff. This is the family’s role, and they have no business doing that.”

Adds state Rep. Carrie Barth, R-Baldwin City: “This is an example of why parents are outraged. It should not be controversial that there should be guidelines regarding children’s access to certain materials. At a minimum, parents should have the right to know. We can do this in a way that is consistent with the First Amendment.”

Williams said the book in question was actually one of the only ones her daughter found that didn’t involve left-wing political or racial indoctrination. The diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) agenda has so overtaken the young adult book world, she says, that “it’s kind of like white people are being written out and there’s nothing for these kids to relate to.”

Still, the book in this case is beyond even a political agenda.

“They’re just inappropriate for this age range,” Williams argues. “They know what reading does for developing minds. That’s why we’re supposed to read to our children. And they know, in this age range, how susceptible they are to being manipulated and their thoughts changed. That’s why they caution us (about) putting them on social media at this age.”

The young mother laments that, perversely, the book offerings in the library’s summer reading for youths program risks destroying the joy of reading.

“Here is a child who loves to read and is just looking forward to another book that she can add to her collection of things that she enjoys. And she’s not given any topics like she used to be given that are just happy-go-lucky, carefree things that kids can enjoy. All of these topics are morbid, demonic.”

The Heartlander asked the library why this book is recommended by the library for such young readers, and what socially redeeming quality the book contributes to young readers.

Williams says it saddens her to feel the public library has to be closed off to her family.

“My daughters like exploring new things,” she says. “But the problem I’m at right now is that we don’t know something’s bad until we’ve read it. I’m not a book censor. I’m not about banning books and things like that. I believe in freedom of speech. I believe in our constitutional rights.

“But distributing murder porn to children – it’s not freedom of speech.”