New York Education Department Promotes Sexually Explicit Book for National Reading Event

A schoolteacher collects library books from students who just graduated but borrowed them before schools were shut down at a school in New York City on June 29, 2020. Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

The New York State Education Department (NYSED) promoted on social media a graphic novel that contains illustrations of teenage boys performing oral sex, only to remove the post and claim to be unaware of the book’s explicit sexual contents.

In a series of posts on Tuesday, the NYSED celebrated this year’s “Read Across America,” a reading event championed by National Education Association, the largest teachers’ union in the United States. One of the posts featured New York State Librarian Lauren Moore, who recommended to young readers the 2019 book “Gender Queer: A Memoir.”