Educators and literature defenders alike have the Edmonton Public School Board to thank for the Alberta government deciding to retool its ministerial order that bans sexually explicit books from school libraries.

After the province's second-largest board came out with a removal list of some 200 books that included classics and best-selling authors ranging from Maya Angelou to Margaret Atwood, to , Premier Danielle Smith derided it as "vicious compliance" and said it was never the province's intention to prohibit literature like that.

This week, Alberta's education minister declared a pause on the two-months-old book restriction policy, to modify the order so boards' bans are closer to what Smith and the government had in mind when it first waded into the school library culture wars.

To

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