Anonymous Patron writes “– A national book company has apologized for offering one of its middle school-aged books at an elementary school book fair.
Officials at Prattville Elementary School pulled “To Be a Slave” from the school’s book fair after a parent discovered the book contained what she described as offensive language.
A spokesman for Scholastic apologized for the book being sold at an elementary school.
What would you expect?
The mother didn’t expect to find the word nigger in a book about American slaves?
Well, I suppose that is to be expected, given the current socio-cultural context, but the word was used in the mainstream back then and I doubt if it was out of place in the book. It is also still used rather frequently today and young people need to know that so they can figure out what is going for themselves when they encounter it.
given that it was Scholastic…
I’m surprised they didn’t make the parents apologise to their representative.
This book contains accounts by slaves of what it was like ‘to be a slave’. From amazon.com, editorial review: “This book is about how it felt. The words of black men and women who had themselves been slaves are here, accompanied by Julius Lester’s historical commentary and Tom Feelings’s powerful and muted paintings, To Be a Slave has been a touchstone in children’s literature for over thirty years.” Big surprise that some of the language might be offensive by today’s standards.
I do have the book in my library and have not had any complaints about it, nor concerns raised.
s/