EDMONTON — Edmonton’s public school board is yanking more than 200 books from its library shelves this year — including literary classics such as author Margaret Atwood’s "The Handmaid's Tale" — to comply with provincial directive on banning books containing inappropriate sexual content.
The lists of the books to be removed was leaked and widely shared online Thursday, and the school division verified the list Friday morning.
Public School Board chair Julie Kusiek said anyone unhappy with the move should contact Alberta Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides.
"Division staff worked over the summer to ensure that only books that directly met the criteria in the ministerial order were added to the division’s removal list," Kusiek said in a statement.
The result, she said, is "several excellent books will be removed from our shelves this fall."
Kusiek said trustees have already heard concerns from families about the list of books, and that trustees share those concerns.
"We encourage anyone who has a concern about a book being removed, or the criteria for book removal set out in the ministerial order to contact the Minister of Education and Childcare directly,” she wrote.
In a response, Nicolaides said Thursday that his office is reviewing the Edmonton public board list and has asked the division to clarify why the books on it have been chosen for removal.
"We will work with them to ensure the standards are accurately implemented," he said, adding that Alberta Education plans to work with all school boards to ensure "the policy is being implemented appropriately with the intent of ensuring young kids are not exposed to sexually explicit books.”
Edmonton Public's list of books, the first such look into the policy's affect in schools, also includes Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" and books from authors like Alice Munro and Ayn Rand.
Dozens of additional books will also be made inaccessible to students in kindergarten through Grade 9, including George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby."
The school division said in an email that the list is non-exhaustive, and further titles are expected to be added.
Nicolaides has directed all schools to remove books with sexually explicit content from shelves by the end of September. They must also have in place by the new year clear policies on how the new directive will be maintained.
The rules, contained in a ministerial order signed by Nicolaides last month, bans books with explicit sexual content for students in all grades. Those in Grade 10 and over may have access to books containing what the province deems to be non-explicit sexual content.
The new rules were announced by Nicolaides after he said officials found four graphic novels with explicit sexual content in school libraries.
"This is simply about ensuring young students are not exposed to content depicting oral sex, child molestation or other very inappropriate content," Nicolaides said last month.
Critics have accused Nicolaides of overstepping his mandate while pandering to the social conservative wing of the governing United Conservative Party.
Howard Sapers, the executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said he was disappointed by the division's list and concerned with the path the province is going down.
"Let's just think about what the loss is to students and to their community when students don't get exposed to a variety of thought and expression," said Sapers, who also served two terms as member of Alberta's legislature.
"It's important to individual growth but it's also important to the kind of society we want to live in."
Earlier this month, Saper's organization and Nicolaides were in a public spat over the policy after an opinion column the association published said the government was engaging in "textbook censorship" with its policy, to which the minister said the association was pushing a "false narrative."
The minister's office also took issue with Sapers writing that books like "The Handmaid's Tale" would fall victim to the policy. Nicolaides' office said at the time that such a choice didn't align with the intent of the policy, which school boards were expected to uphold.
Sapers said Thursday he "took no joy" in seeing his prediction come true.
"There is absolutely a need to be vigilant about what young minds are exposed to, to make sure that it's not harmful," he said.
"But when you have a policy that is just so over-broad that this is the result, then it's hard to accept the government at its word that it did not intend to see large-scale book banning."
The move comes as students head back to school for the new year, including 115,000 across more than 200 schools in the Edmonton public system. On top of that, talks continue to head off a potential provincewide strike by some 51,000 teachers.
Opposition NDP education critic Amanda Chapman said in a statement Thursday the government's priorities are wrong that the province should be more focused on heading off a strike.
"Instead, they’ve set their sights on keeping the works of prolific Canadian authors like Margaret Atwood out of the classroom,” Chapman said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 29, 2025.
Jack Farrell, The Canadian Press
