At least 112 books that have been challenged elsewhere are in Duval County schools. The number could be much larger.
Eye on Jacksonville determined this by getting a listing of all books in local government school libraries and using artificial intelligence to look for matches in lists of challenged books.
We had to pay for the information. More about that later.
Several of the titles appear frequently on lists of books that have been restricted or removed from school libraries throughout the United States.
Far Left organizations such as PEN America and the American Library Association (ALA), persistently refer to cleaning up school libraries as “banning books.” No books are banned from publication.
According to the AI bot, his table shows books in Jacksonville public school libraries that were among the “most challenged” books in the 2023-2025 period. Many of these have been removed in specific districts in Florida, Texas, and other states.
Suspect books found locally include The Bluest Eye, frequently removed or restricted to 18+ — recently in Pinellas County — for depictions of trauma and abuse, and Out of Darkness, restricted in Texas and Florida for “mature content.”
The following titles also have been challenged, although it is unlikely any Jacksonville residents would object to them.
- 1984 & Animal Farm: Occasionally challenged for political/religious themes.
- Fahrenheit 451: Frequently challenged for profanity or religious objections.
- Brave New World: Often targeted for sexual content and anti-family themes.
- To Kill a Mockingbird: Sometimes removed from requiredreading lists, though less often removed from library shelves entirely.
Nearly all the suspect books apparently are kept at Sandalwood High School, according to the list given to Eye. Whether they are available to students or just housed there is unclear.
Gemini, the AI bot used to match the titles, reported there are 21,084 unique titles in the school library collection.
Eye asked Gemini to compare the school catalog and a list kept by Bruce Friedman, head of No Left Turn in Education. He is the No. 1 book challenger in Florida, and perhaps the nation. Friedman lives in Clay County and has successfully challenged more than 1,000 books that contain pornography or propaganda or are otherwise unsuitable for children in school.
Friedman currently is partnering with local activist Blake Harper, who is planning a series of book challenge training sessions in Jacksonville.
Harper said the free training will be provided to residents who understand the need to restore the school libraries and will be held in local churches.
The first session was Monday. Anyone interested in attending one of the sessions can contact Harper at [email protected] or 904-240-9855.
“A lot of work is needed to restore bedrock values to our community that help children to grow up to have healthy, fulfilling, and constructive lives.” Harper said. Removing inappropriate books from school libraries is one way, he said.
Book challengers have a lot of work to do, but it is worth it to protect children in school. We revised this story after noticing a couple of glitches in the first AI product, which Gemini blamed on the “dirty” file given to us by the school system.
We enlisted another AI bot, called Claude, and fed it the school library inventory and another, larger, database of book challenges. Claude shrunk the list of titles by removing duplicates and made the comparison.
Claude’s answer:
“A summary of what was found:
- 202,814 unique titles in the library list after de-duplication
- 2,201 exact matches between the two lists
- 418 additional close matches where titles matched after normalizing punctuation and spacing (e.g., a colon vs. no colon, extra spaces, etc
- 2,619 total titles appear in both lists, sorted alphabetically.”
Again, not all the challenges on the list were successful. But if Claude is correct, at least 2,201 books in local school libraries have been challenged elsewhere.
Despite the problems, using existing lists to identify books in Jacksonville school libraries can save parents time and effort. The school system’s library catalog is constructed so that parents can only search by school, rather than all libraries.
That is why Eye made a public records request for the entire catalog. But we were shocked to be billed almost $30 for the information. Administrators claimed it took more than 30 minutes to produce the list.
I spent 45 years as a reporter and editor and accessed public records thousands of times, without once being charged a fee. The city council auditor’s office used to copy the entire city budget onto floppy disks in Lotus 1-2-3 format for me. No charge.
Several years ago, Eye sought information about teachers charged with sex crimes and we were charged more than $100 for the information. That was the first time I ever paid a public agency for public information, and it caused acid reflux.
However, today selling records is a source of considerable revenue for local government. City Hall, the sheriff’s office, school board and other parts of the government collect thousands of dollars each year from people who want information about their government that they are entitled to under Florida’s government-in-the-sunshine laws. Lawyers, insurance companies and the media are among the customers.
