More on both situations at Missouri's Republic School District.

Nine groups—including the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, the National Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, and the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri—sent a joint letter to Superintendent Vern Minor and Republic School District's seven school board members.

Happily, unlike most of the coverage of the situation, the article about the letter mentions that only four of the seven board members were present at the vote, and that only one of those four had actually read the books in question.

Now the school board is going to revisit the books at their September board meeting. One hopes that all seven members will be in attendance and that all seven will have actually, you know, READ THE BOOKS.

Also, there was a protest at the most recent school board meeting about the district's response to a sexual assault (if you haven't read about that story, your head might explode when you do: it's that horrible) at the middle school AND the book banning.

There's an official response from the school system about the rape case posted at the district website.