Author John Green has responded to news that his latest novel has been banned in a southern California middle school.

Earlier this week, the Riverside Unified School District’s “book reconsideration committee” voted to take Green’s The Fault in Our Stars out of Frank Augustus Miller Middle School.

The vote was called when a middle school parent voiced concern over the content of The Fault in Our Stars. Her worries? According to a local newspaper, “the subject matter involves teens dying of cancer who use crude language and have sex.”

Said the mother, “I just didn’t think it was appropriate for an 11-, 12-, 13-year-old to read. I was really shocked it was in a middle school.”

The committee voted 6-1 to take the book off the middle school library shelf. The Fault in Our Stars will still be allowed at the district’s high school.

Said one of the committee members who voted in favor of the ban, “The thing that kept hitting me like a tidal wave was these kids dealing with their own mortality, and how difficult that might be for an 11-year-old or 12-year-old reading this book.”

With the news making its way across the internet on Thursday, Green responded to a question about the recent ban on his Tumblr in a very John Green fashion. “I guess I am both happy and sad,” he said, “I am happy because apparently young people in Riverside, California will never witness or experience mortality since they won’t be reading my book, which is great for them.

“But I am also sad because I was really hoping I would be able to introduce the idea that human beings die to the children of Riverside, California and thereby crush their dreams of immortality.”

Coincidentally, this week is Banned Books Week — the time of year when the American Library Association reveals the 10 most-challenged books in the United States. Fault didn’t make the list, but other books like The Hunger Games and Green’s own Paper Towns did.

As readers of Fault know, the sex in the YA novel is only lightly spoken of during the story. We suspect that the adults on the school’s committee didn’t read the whole book or are being overly protective.