A children’s book called “Read Me a Story Stella” was added to an Alabama library’s list of books under review because of their “sexually explicit” nature. The reason the book was placed on the list, however, had nothing to do with its content—it was flagged because the author’s name happened to be Marie-Louise Gay. “Although it is obviously laughable that our picture book shows up on their list of censored books simply because the author’s last name is Gay, the ridiculousness of that fact should not detract from the seriousness of the situation,” Kristen Brassard, Gay’s publicist at Groundwork Books said in a statement. The HCPL executive director, Cindy Hewitt, said that the book was incorrectly put on the list because the author’s name, specifically the word “gay,” triggered a keyword in the facility’s system.
