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In the sixth grade a bunch of us passed around a copy of Jean Auel's The Valley of the Horses with all of the sex scenes marked off for easy locating. I know I had read Clan of the Cave Bear well before that (from my mom's bookshelf, not the school's).
I imagine it varies vastly from kid to kid what they are interested in reading in comparison to what the adults in their life would consider appropriate reading. And that is why I am not surprised to see that as school librarians are less and less inclined to participate in that function (and per ALA policies are frequently encouraged not to do so) parents become more and more upset about it.
I'm not saying that the parents are always right in their complaints but that this isn't necesarrily a case of parents unwilling to be responsible for what their children read but by definition parents being unable to control what their children read in the school library. So, when they think it is inappropriate for children (rightly or wrongly) they have no recourse but to seek its removal.
But I also grew up with a public library system that strongly believed they would not act in loco parentis and therefore anything in the collection was available to anybody who asked. This included their subscription to Playboy. It was available to anybody who asked, regardless of age (and when I worked there later in life that was a question on the application: if you were asked to give Playboy to a 12 year old would you). All the kids knew this. We could see boobies just by walking up to the that desk and asking that librarian for it.
Not one of us ever did.
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