What an Outside Book Rating Can Actually Tell You

Utah’s 2025 school-library audit began with a list of 186 books rated 4 or 5. The auditors used it to choose books for review. Then they read the books themselves.

That’s a useful distinction when an outside rating turns up in a selection file or a challenge packet. A rating can point a reviewer to a passage. It can’t decide whether the book belongs in a library.

RatedBooks says its reports “provide page numbers and quotes.” It also warns that page numbers “may vary depending on which version of the books was read and whether it was in print or digital.” The rating-scale page says the reports mirror movie, TV, video game, and music ratings, “whose focus has primarily been on levels of explicitness in sex, language, profanity and violence.”

So the report can help find certain kinds of content. It can’t tell you how a passage works in the book as a whole, or whether the book meets a library’s rules for choosing books and handling formal challenges.

Start with the book in front of you

Check what the report describes. Confirm the title, author, ISBN, edition, format, report date, and rating source. A list may combine material from different sources, so the name at the top of a spreadsheet may not tell you where an individual score came from.

Then compare the cited pages with the library’s copy. Page numbers can shift between editions, and between print and digital versions. Find the passage and read enough around it to see what is happening.

If the book is under formal reconsideration, the library’s review policy comes next. The American Library Association recommends that committees read the full work and available reviews, consult the library’s rules for choosing books and handling challenges, and consider challenged passages in context. Its sample criteria for school libraries include curriculum, student interests, literary quality, age and developmental needs, factual accuracy, and differing viewpoints.

That’s ALA guidance, not the rule for every district. Local policy and applicable law govern the process.

Utah’s 2025 audit shows the difference

The audit says a legislator provided the starting list and names RatedBooks.org as its source. Footnote 6 says the ratings were based on BookLooks.org’s rating system, which the report calls “now-defunct.”

The auditors put the 186 titles in random order, then searched public catalogs at secondary schools in seven districts. They chose 20 titles found in at least one library among 42 school catalogs. Then they added two more “based on legislative concern.” That made 22 books. The auditors read all 22 in full.

The list helped choose books for the audit. The auditors reviewed those books themselves under the standards for that audit. The outside rating shaped the sample; it wasn’t the audit’s final finding.

There’s another limit here. Utah’s legislative auditors examined a sample of books. A district’s reconsideration process is where a committee decides whether a particular book stays in its school library. Those are different processes.

Keep the referral separate from the review

A review file should show how the book came to someone’s attention and what happened next. If an outside rating brought it in, record the title, author, ISBN, edition, format, report date, source, and rating system. Check the cited pages against the library’s copy and note any differences.

Then record the library’s review separately: what the committee read, which policy criteria it used, and how it reached its decision. The rating can point to a passage. The committee still has to read the book.

Sources

• RatedBooks, Rating Scale and Background Information.
• American Library Association, Selection Criteria and Reconsideration Committees.
• Utah Office of the Legislative Auditor General, A Review of School Library Books, Report 2025-28 (PDF), especially “Reviewed Books Were Selected From a List and Found in School Libraries” and footnote 6.