Hannah Rees of Clean Up Alabama talks about initiating a nationwide movement to remove inappropriate children’s books from libraries

When Hannah Rees set out to rid her local library of sexually explicit children’s books, she had no idea that her bold action would lead to a nationwide movement. She founded Clean Up Alabama, a grassroots organization of concerned parents fighting to keep pornography and other explicit books out of their children’s libraries.

On Wednesday, Rees was a guest on “1819 News: The Podcast” to talk about her group’s success, the work that still needs to be done and how it all started in Prattville with an innocent-looking book about pronouns.

Rees said the incident that sparked her crusade happened one day when she was talking with other homeschool moms about library books. One of the moms, who was teaching her children pronouns, said her son had been inadvertently exposed to left-wing gender ideology through an otherwise normal-looking children’s book.

“She’s cooking dinner and her son comes down and says, ‘Mom, did you notice that you have to ask people for their pronouns? … In the book you got me at the library,'” Rees explained.

Wondering if there were other books like this, Rees began looking in the library’s online catalog. What she found “shocked” her.

“We expect that in the adult section,” she said. “We expect certain kinds of books, but this was very unremarkable. These were books that seemed innocent from the outside. And what is really being taught here is just direct indoctrination into the radical cult of gender.”

Rees met with the director of the Prattville library in hopes of quickly resolving the problem, which she believed was a simple oversight.

“I naively thought I would come to this meeting and she wouldn’t know these books were there… I gave her the benefit of the doubt,” Rees said. “We had a very warm conversation; it was a great conversation, but I realized after the first 10 minutes that this was no accident. It was very intentional, very deliberate.”

Rees found about 30 other inappropriate books in the library and enlisted the help of other mothers to fill out forms requesting their removal. She found that she was the first person to fill out a sophisticated form.

After weeks of no response from the library, Rees made her concerns public by attending meetings of the City Council, County Commission and the Alabama Public Library Service.

Thanks to her efforts and those of Clean Up Alabama, the Prattville Library resigned and fired two directors, including the one she had originally spoken to. Additionally, the entire board of the Prattville-Autauga Library resigned and was replaced by members who were more open to protecting children from illegal material.

SEE: The entire board of the Prattville-Autauga library has resigned since the drama surrounding sexually explicit children’s books began

The new board quickly issued guidelines regulating the ordering and placement of “obscene” books in the local library.

Other libraries have begun reviewing their catalogs and policies thanks to Clean Up Alabama. Rees said their successes should encourage people to finish the work that remains to be done and rid the state’s libraries of bad books. She urged Christians and pastors to get involved in cultural and political issues, and that spreading the gospel should make the world a better place.

“There’s a church on every corner. This battle should have been won on day one,” she said. “If the pastors of our church … if they had come to the meeting, it would have been over.”

“If you change people’s hearts and minds, you should also change the culture,” she added.

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