On the eve of the May 26, 2026 Allen Independent School District Board of Trustees vote on the purchase of 818 library books for district campuses, this is a cover-to-cover review of four titles drawn from the 818-book proposal package, known internally to the district as List 4.

Three of the four titles are published books reviewed in full from the page: Difficult Girls by Veronica Bane, Ollie In Between by Jess Callans, and Oathbound by Tracy Deonn. The fourth section covers two additional titles — Wild Blizzard by Rodman Philbrick and I Survived #26 by Lauren Tarshis — that cannot be reviewed by anyone because, on the day of the proposed vote, the books had not been published.

Both unpublished titles appear on List 4 with proposed Elementary-shelf placement. The evidence that the district itself acknowledged the books did not yet exist comes from the district’s own production in response to LION’s first Texas Public Information Act request — reference AllenISD-PIA-001, Part 5. The Texas Public Information Act, codified at Texas Government Code Chapter 552, gives any Texas resident the right to request public records held by a governmental body. AllenISD-PIA-001 Part 5 contains the spreadsheet rows for the books proposed for purchase, with a librarian-note column attached to each title. For these two books, the librarian notes were verbatim acknowledgements of non-publication.

For Wild Blizzard, identified by ISBN 9781546138204 with a publisher release date of October 20, 2026, the librarian note in the district’s production reads:

“Not yet published. Set to be released October 2026.”

Allen ISD — AllenISD-PIA-001 Part 5, p.132

For I Survived #26 by Lauren Tarshis, with a publisher release date of September 15, 2026, the librarian note reads:

“This book is number 26 in an extremely popular series already in our library. This one is not yet published. Expected release September 2026.”

Allen ISD — AllenISD-PIA-001 Part 5, p.61

The May 26, 2026 vote is scheduled for 6:30 PM at the Allen ISD Professional Learning & Auxiliary Services Building, 610 E. Bethany Drive. List 4 is on the consent agenda. Both unpublished titles remained on the proposed list as of the morning of May 25, 2026.

Corrections to any factual matter above can be sent to corrections@lionwatchtx.org.