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Florida Book Protesters Deal with It!

Some 100 demonstrators protested August 9 along a major Ocala, Florida, thoroughfare over the Marion-Levy Public Library System’s retention of the book Deal with It! A Whole New Approach to Your Body, Brain, and Life As a Gurl. Protestors passed around a petition seeking the ouster of Director Julia H. Sieg.

About 30 people formed a counterdemonstration across the street in support of the library retaining Deal with It! as well as It’s Perfectly Normal, which had been challenged last year; they circulated a pro-staff petition, according to the August 10 Ocala Star-Banner.

Among the anti-library demonstrators was trustee Eddie MacCausland, who told the paper that Sieg “is ultimately responsible for the books being brought to the library. The [removal] petition is part of the overall strategy.”

Ironically, the original complainant did not attend either protest, Sieg told American Libraries, explaining that Pamela Thomas seemed satisfied with a June 4 letter from Sieg explaining that staff had moved Deal with It! from the young-adult area—where it had mistakenly been placed and Thomas’s 9-year-old daughter had browsed it—to the adult nonfiction section where the frank, coming-of-age book belonged.

Posted August 13, 2001.

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