A school district in central Texas has removed “The Devil’s Arithmetic,” a classic young-adult novel dealing with the Holocaust, after reviewing books for material that could violate a new state law forbidding “DEI” classroom content.
The novel was one of dozens to be removed after Leander Independent School District, in a suburb of Austin, undertook its review in part by using artificial intelligence.
Leander ISD is far from the first district to remove books on Jewish subjects amid a dragnet targeting diversity- or LGBTQ-related themes. Over the last few years, districts in Texas, Florida and beyond have pulled versions of Anne Frank’s diary; “Maus”; “The Fixer”; and other Jewish books. Recently another Texas school district, covering the Houston suburb of Rosenberg, placed hundreds of books “under review” for potential violation of a different state law — including both “Maus” books and “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation.”
Now, the Trump administration has joined Republican lawmakers in multiple states in calling for schools to be purged of diversity-related content.
“I think removing books like ‘The Devil’s Arithmetic’ is a huge mistake, but it’s understandable why a district administrator would do it in the current climate of fear and intimidation,” Frank Strong, a teacher in Austin who also co-directs the advocacy group Texas Freedom to Read Project, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Many of the past cases have resulted from formal parent challenges, which Republican lawmakers have empowered in some places. But the use of AI in the Leander case signals a new frontier: one where automated technology, increasingly used in school districts’ book ban decisions, could cause Jewish stories to be sidelined as part of a broad conservative resistance to stories that center characters’ marginalized identities.
Strong told JTA that he suspects “The Devil’s Arithmetic,” along with other books generally considered classroom staples like “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The House on Mango Street,” were “flagged because questions of identity are central to its story. Which really highlights the absurdity of Senate Bill 12.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announces a new public safety initiative to combat violent crime in Greater Houston during a press conference in Houston, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025. (Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
Senate Bill 12, signed into Texas law by Gov. Greg Abbott in September, is framed around “parental rights in public education.” The law places classroom restrictions on “instruction, diversity, equity and inclusion duties, and social transitioning.” Among the law’s provisions: Districts “may not assign diversity, equity, and inclusion duties to any person,” and are banned from “assistance with social transitioning.”
A growing number of districts in the state have shut down LGBTQ clubs as a result of the law. Others, like Leander, are removing classroom materials like books in response to it.
According to a local news station, AI “was used in the initial part of the process” of the Leander ISD review of hundreds of books. District administrators then made manual reviews before finalizing which books to pull.
An email that district leaders sent to educators ordering the “pause” of the books, published by Strong on his blog, states that the materials “are not being permanently removed,” but “are simply on hold while we seek additional guidance.” The removals, the district leader wrote, are “necessary to ensure our curriculum remains in full compliance with the law.”
The list of around 40 books determined by Leander ISD to potentially be in violation of the law includes “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Les Misérables,” and books by Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin and S.E. Hinton.
It also includes “The Devil’s Arithmetic,” the 1988 novel by Jewish author Jane Yolen about a young Jewish American girl who travels back in time to World War II-era Poland during Passover and is sent to a death camp. The book has received wide acclaim and become a classroom mainstay for teaching middle-grade readers about the Holocaust; it was adapted into a TV movie starring Kirsten Dunst. The book has not been formally challenged by any district parent, according to Strong.
Initially placed on the district’s list of approved class books for eighth-graders, the novel was flagged, in the district’s words, to be “paused for review SB 12” — the only eighth-grade book to be flagged as such. It was also pulled from a list of approved books for the school’s eighth-grade book club, “The Past, Today: Historical Fiction,” again with district leaders citing SB 12. A representative for the district did not return a JTA request for comment.
A rubric used by the district to measure the books’ appropriateness, viewed by JTA, has a long list of qualities found in books with a “high likelyhood [sic]” of violating the law.
An offending book, the rubric states, “explicitly frames representation as a lesson or guiding principle”; “suggests policy change or advocacy”; frames the issue of representation “as inequity requiring remedies or advocacy”; “historically misrepresents or representative of a singular point of view of historical or present political conflicts”; contains “frequent sensitive themes that has a high likelyhood [sic] of being viewed as inappropriate for grade”; or is “used in ways that elevate sensitive themes to instructional focus.”
The same rubric takes exceptional issue with books about gender, saying books where a “student or character explicitly asks to be called by pronouns/names linked to gender transition” or where a “pronoun/name change [is] central to narrative” should be pulled.
In “The Devil’s Arithmetic,” the protagonist is referred to by a different name — though the same gender — after she travels back in time to assume the identity of a relative who died in the Holocaust.
Leander has made headlines for book removals in the past. In 2021 the district was among the first in the nation to remove books at the behest of conservative parent activists. A “curriculum advisory committee” at the time ultimately voted to remove 11 books, none of which was “The Devil’s Arithmetic.”
Texas is one of many states with a statewide Holocaust education mandate. In 2021, a district leader in the Dallas area told his teachers that a different state law would require them to teach “opposing” views of the Holocaust.
What will really hurt teachers in the district, Strong said, is the need to quickly rework any lesson plans they may have devised around “The Devil’s Arithmetic,” even if the removal winds up being temporary.
“Teachers choose books like ‘The Devil’s Arithmetic’ because students need books like ‘The Devil’s Arithmetic,’” Strong said.
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