Keeping questionable books out of school libraries

KXII-TV – Sherman,TX, Takes A Look At what school officials tell them about how their district keeps “questionable” books off school library shelves. Last week a parent in Marietta was shocked to find her child was reading an inappropriate book that came from the school library. But school officials in Durant say they closely monitor what goes on their bookshelves.

September 10, 2008 by Uncategorized 2

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2 Responses

  1. RobertL says:
    September 10, 2008 at 10:46 pm

    What book?
    OK.. maybe I missed it, but what book did the parent find inappropriate? Having worked with the public for a quite a while, I get nervous when people talk about inappropriate books. That’s a pretty vague category, and unless the selection is completely bland, I can’t imagine that they don’t have books that some parent there would find objectionable.

    Reply
  2. Anonymous says:
    September 24, 2008 at 7:05 pm

    Inappropriate Books
    I work in a private school and we have a fabulous fiction collection. Our library staff prides itself on choosing great fiction for our students based on professional reviews. As a fiction collection grows, few librarians can read every book in a school collection. We review books as they arrive for processing, and even have divided our fiction collection into a General and an Advanced category. This might help students choose a most appropriate book to their age and maturity levels. In a second part to this concern, I would also take a moment to stress that the right to read is important for our students. Some students are more advanced then others. When we discuss book choice with our students we stress that we would hope they would choose appropriate choices, but we do not define appropriate. We caution our students that some books may be more appropriate for an older student, and if they begin reading and find one of their book choices is not meeting their reading need, we ask our students to return that book for a title more appropriate. We also have a challenge policy in our school. With the many choices available to our students we must be vigilant in teaching that reading is a right to each person. What is appropriate to one student, may not be appropriate to another. We encourage our students to be responsible about their reading. As a librarian giving students choice is a great challenge and a great blessing. Keep reading kids!

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