Last fall, Mari Butler Abry was one of hundreds of educators facing a daunting new task — vetting thousands of books to comply with a sweeping Iowa education law that bans books depicting sex acts from schools. A teacher-librarian at Perry Community School District, Butler Abry and several school officials surveyed books by briefly reviewing lists from other schools, reading book summaries and even tried to use ChatGPT to narrow down which of the district's more than 20,000 books needed to be pulled. In the end, Perry removed only three books because of Senate File 496, Iowa's new law requiring “age-appropriate” library programs and prohibiting most books depicting or describing sex acts from schools. The law also restricts instruction and curriculum about gender identity and sexual orientation through sixth grade. But an exclusive Des Moines Register survey of Iowa's 325 public school districts found that some schools pulled dozens — even hundreds — of books under the law before...