LEWISTON – Police won’t pursue an obscenity complaint over a controversial sex education book on the public library’s shelves.

JoAn Karkos filed the complaint against the Lewiston Public Library on Nov. 19, charging that the library violated the city’s obscenity ordinance when it placed “It’s Perfectly Normal” on its shelves.

“The determination that we made was that having those books available does not violate city ordinances,” Sgt. David Chick said Monday.

Subtitled “Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex & Sexual Health,” the book features frank but cartoon-like illustrations of naked people. Topics include abstinence, masturbation and sexually transmitted diseases.

Karkos, 64, is due in court next week to answer a theft charge over the book she refused to return to the Lewiston Public Library. She could not be reached by phone on Monday. However, she e-mailed drawings scanned from the book to a reporter.

“Print the pictures youth of any age can see at the Lewiston Public Library without warnings and the Chief of Police refuses to acknowledge they are obscene for the age group targeted,” Karkos wrote in the e-mail.

The Lewiston woman has said she particularly objects to a series of cartoonish drawings that show naked male and female bodies. One page depicts masturbating children. Another teaches girls to examine their genitalia with a hand mirror. Those drawings were among the scans she e-mailed to a Sun Journal reporter.

Karkos has contended that such images are obscene. Librarians disagreed, and the Lewiston Public Library board chose to file charges of theft against Karkos.

She responded last month by filing a complaint of her own, calling the book pornographic.

Lewiston’s ordinance defines pornography as something the average person, applying contemporary standards, would find appealing to “prurient interest.” It defines prurient interest as having a “shameful or morbid interest in sex.”

“The book does not present itself in that manner, but offers itself as more educational,” Chick said. The book has been on the library shelves for 13 years with only one complaint, so apparently few in Lewiston find it obscene, he added.

Library Director Rick Speer was relieved to learn that police were dropping the matter.

“I don’t view this as obscene material in the least,” Speer said Monday. “I thought of it as a waste of the police’s time and of ours, and that’s just been ridiculous.”

“It’s Perfectly Normal” was written by Robie H. Harris and illustrated by Michael Emberley. Published in 1993, it has won several educational awards.

Karkos said in an earlier interview that she learned about the book on political Web sites and decided to see if it was available in local libraries. She found copies in the Lewiston and Auburn public libraries in August and checked them out. She refused to return either copy, and sent each library a check to cover the cost.

According to its publisher, Massachusetts-based Candlewick Press, the book has been sold in 25 countries and translated into 21 languages. More than two dozen Maine libraries carry the book.