LISNews: Librarian News

Well, after almost 15 years of having the store, it has happened. A customer asked me to remove a book from my shelves.

This has never happened before. We’ve had people move books they thought were objectionable, but never has someone looked me in the eye and said, “Are you the owner? I want you to remove this book because it makes fun of childhood sexual abuse.” I apologized that she found the book objectionable and gave her a refund.

The book in question is My First Dictionary: Corrupting Young Minds OneWord at a Time by Ross Horsley. Does this book cross the line of good taste? Sometimes, sure it does. But honestly, so do lots of humor books. Parts of the book are laugh-out-loud funny, and parts of it made me cringe. I try to warn customers that sometimes it’s a little bleak. There are some letters about abandonment and parental drinking that seem particularly cruel.

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From q13fox:

An Oak Harbor mom is upset with a book her fifth-grade daughter brought home from school.

It's called "What's the Big Secret" and is available at many public schools.

"I can't even stand that she had already read this without me even knowing," said Jennifer Swedeoson.

Swedeoson had planned to have "the birds and the bees" talk with her 10-year-old daughter Kaleigh when she reached middle school. But that timeline changed when Kaleigh brought the book home from school yesterday.

"I start flipping through, this is all right, but then it starts talking more about sex and I get into it and it's completely too graphic for her."

"What's the Big Secret" shows how boys and girls are physically different, offers a lesson in reproduction and talks about "different types of touching."

"This is one of the first that definitely caught my eye, talking about masturbation when you are 10 years old," Swedeoson said. "What do you need to read that for? I'm not so upset about the book itself. I think they should be sending home permission slips, making sure parents are aware that the book is there.”

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The co-founders of Michigan Open Carry Inc. a gun-rights group currently challenging a Capital Area District Library policy that bans guns from the library, have written a children's book titled, "My Parents Open Carry" published by White Feather Press of Hamilton.

Brian Jeffs, a state geologist from Bath Township, and Nathan Nephew, a software developer from DeWitt, told columnist John Schneider the book's message is: "You can't rely on others to protect you. You have a natural right to self-defense. The cops do the best they can, but can't be there all the time."

From the NYT

Brian Jacques, Writer of Redwall Series, Dies at 71
By MARGALIT FOX
Published: February 9, 2011

He was a longshoreman and a long-haul trucker; a merchant mariner and a railway fireman; a boxer, a bus driver and a British bobby. But it wasn’t until he became a milkman that Brian Jacques found his métier.......Read more here