The Alberta government has hit pause on a controversial ministerial order that would have affected the books school libraries were able to make available to students this fall.

The ministerial order, which was presented in July by Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides, called for school libraries to make changes to the types of books they were making available to students.

Under the order, school libraries were not to include materials with sexually explicit content, and students in Grade 9 or below would have no longer been able to access books containing “non-explicit sexual content,” defined in the order as reference to a sex act that is not detailed or clear. Students in Grade 10 and above would have been able to access materials with “non-explicit sexual content” as long as it is “developmentally appropriate for the student accessing the material.”

Over the ensuing months, critics called for the order to be rescinded. The Canadian Children’s Book Centre called the order “sweeping and vague” and warned it “risks the removal of many diverse and inclusive books and disproportionately targets 2SLGBTQIA+ stories.”

Last week, the order sustained a new round of criticism, after a list of more than 200 books Edmonton Public Schools would be removing from their libraries to comply with the new rules was made public. The list included books such as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and Atwood took to social media to criticize the move, going so far as to write a short satirical story in which she likened Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to a blue-dress-clad Commander’s wife from the dystopian classic. In a speech to Pen International’s 90th Congress in Krakow on Sept. 2 (and reproduced in her Substack), Atwood drew international attention to the order and the resulting ban: “this is the first-ever Canadian province-wide attempt at mass book banning. I’m in good company, however: Brave New World and 1984 are also on the list. I guess they don’t want young people thinking about dictatorships.”

In an about-face on Tuesday – the first day of school for many students in the province – the government announced it was pausing the order. At an unrelated press conference, Smith said the government would be rewriting the order to make its intentions more clear for school boards.

“The direction will be to take books with pornographic images out of the libraries and to leave the classics alone,” Smith said. “There has been some wilful and purposeful misunderstanding of the policy.”

Julie Kusiek, chair of the board of Edmonton Public Schools, said in a statement that the board was “grateful for the Minister of Education and Childcare’s responsiveness” to parent, educator, and community concerns about the order. “We appreciate the Minister’s decision to pause implementation until further notice,” Kusiek said. “Our board remains committed to keeping lines of communication open with the Minister as we continue to work collaboratively with families and the government in support of student learning.”