The Surrey board first tried to ban the books on religious grounds. The new ban is for educational reasons authorised by the court, according to Mary Polak, chair of the board. Asha’s Moms, for example, was found to have poor punctuation and grammar. James Chamberlain, a gay kindergarten teacher, said: “No books in the school system have ever undergone the same kind of scrutiny as these have. The board has fabricated a set of criteria over six years. These books are used by neighbouring boards without any evidence of ill effects on children.”