Heather Barber has read “To Kill a Mockingbird” cover-to-cover at least six times.

The classic novel by Harper Lee became her favorite book as a child, and she loves it so much that she named her dog “Attie” after the protagonist, Atticus Finch.

This time, however, perched on the second floor of the State House, she didn’t crack open the book purely for her own enjoyment. Barber, a retired educator who lives in Hopkinton, joined dozens of others who lined the hallways in front of Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s office on Thursday, staging a “read-in” protest and urging the governor to veto a bill that bans sexual material – including books – in New Hampshire schools.

Barber doesn’t believe the state should be regulating what kinds of information students can access. If anything, she said, it should be a local issue.

“Every kid and every family is different, and their access to information shouldn’t be something that the government decides,” Barber said.

House Bill 324, proposed by Tuftonboro Republican Glenn Cordelli, prohibits schools from providing any materials to students that meet the legal threshold for obscenity or fall under what the state deems as age-inappropriate or “harmful to minors.” This includes descriptions of nudity and sexual conduct, a predominant appeal to “prurient, shameful or morbid” interests, and a lack of other literary, scientific, medical, artistic or political value for minors.

Cordelli said in March that schools should stick to academics instead of “sexualizing our children.” Other proponents of the bill like that it asserts more parental involvement and control over the kinds of materials children have access to in school.

Barber, on the other hand, worries it’ll become the basis for more restrictions in the future.

“It becomes incremental,” Barber said. “Once you have a book ban in that is small, then it makes it easier to do the next one and the next one.”

Book bans have swept the country in recent years, with a focus on materials that are written by or about LGBTQ people. New Hampshire hasn’t made it out unscathed – several communities, like Bow, have seen challenges against school library books lately.

If it becomes law, this bill would require every school district to establish policies governing what content is allowed in their schools and provide an official forum for parents to question the materials available to their children. Many districts in New Hampshire already have those policies in place.

Stephen Scaer, who makes frequent visits to the State House in support of Republican legislation regarding parents’ rights and bans on gender-related healthcare for transgender kids, stood at the edge of the crowd and said he supports the legislation. He likes that it could give parents more control over what books are available to their children in their classrooms and school libraries.

“It gives a process for parents to challenge books and hold, ultimately, school districts or libraries accountable for the books they’re providing kids,” Stephen said.

Ayotte hasn’t indicated whether she’ll sign the legislation. Her office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Benji Rosenberg, a 13-year-old from Manchester, sat cross-legged next to his family, poring over “The Outsiders” by S.E. Hinton. He joined the protest because of what he called a “blatant assault on free speech.”

“By controlling the books that we read, it’s really just a ploy to control how we think and to prevent dissidence from spreading,” Benji said.

His parents, Matt and Leanne Rosenberg, read “Maus” by Art Spiegelman and “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank. His 8-year-old brother, Charles, read Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree.”

In Barber’s case, she chose “To Kill a Mockingbird” not only because it’s her favorite, but because it’s one of the most challenged books in the country.

“It deals with issues of race. It also dealt with and had sexual assault, but it does it in a way that it’s incredibly well-written,” Barber said. “It talks about courage and civil rights and helping people who are less fortunate, and we need more books like that, not less.”

 

Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.