Inappropriate books from home

Hey all, I’ve got a question here about the books that students bring from home to read at school.

I teach 7th and 8th grade in a small, rural school. Less than 80 students total on my caseload. The area is pretty liberal and supportive of the school, but we do have conservative families from the surrounding area as the district is quite large, physically.

I am super fortunate to have students who are avid readers. However, lately we have had the girls bringing in new adult romance books with explicit sexual content and reading them at school. I don’t think it’s wrong for them to be reading them generally, as long as their parents are aware. I know that it’s normal at this age for them to start being curious about sex and sexuality, and I don’t think that they should be sheltered from the realities of romance and sex or feel ashamed for being curious about it. However, they are not reading age-appropriate, realistic, closed-door romance. They are reading, among other things: ACOTAR, Twisted Love, Butcher and Blackbird, and The Nanny. We only caught that they were inappropriate because I am in my twenties and a reader, so I recognized the titles. When this happened the first two times, we contacted parents and just asked that the students not read the books at school. Our reasoning is that it’s essentially written pornography, and it wouldn’t be okay for students to be watching porn at school so they shouldn’t be reading it. I’m wondering how other teachers are handling this if it comes up for you, as it is happening frequently enough at my school that I am considering sending out an email to all the families letting them know to check their students’ reading material. The reason I’m not sure about doing this is because I don’t want students who are using reading to explore their sexuality or to learn about things their parents might not approve of to get into trouble, or to start a book banning crisis in my community. I just want the students to be bringing school-appropriate material to school and reading whatever they want at home.

Thoughts on this? Thanks!