SPTimes Reports A 30-year-old novel by popular children’s author Judy Blume could be stripped from Hernando County school libraries later this month.
Officials at Spring Hill Elementary School already have removed Deenie from circulation after a parent complained about passages that talk frankly about masturbation. The book chronicles the life of a seventh-grade girl dealing with curvature of the spine.
“What she read isn’t bad,” said mom Jerri Trammell, who complained to Spring Hill principal John DiRienzo. “I just don’t want her to learn about it from Judy Blume.”
Trammell said her daughter brought the book home as part of the school’s Accelerated Reader program, which includes tests. Her daughter read the passages aloud, stunning Trammell.
Then she should learn about it from whom?
Okay, then why didn’t you teach her about it yourself when you had the chance?
“Look, dear. This is your vagina, and this is your clitoris. And when you rub it, it feels good, which is a nice alternative for when your fath — uh, your boyfriend is as fast off the mark as an Olympic sprinter. Which will be most nights and especially when he’s been drinking.”
See? It would have been so easy for your daughter to learn about the facts of life from you instead of from some street corner or a total stranger.
Censoring by the lib. ALA suppression of reports.
When a librarian or library attempts to suppress materials, the American Library Association suppresses information about the reports. The form for reporting censoring by the public is biased in that it isn’t formated conveniently for reporting censoring by a librarian or censoring by a library. Examples…
http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=Dealing_wi th_Challenges&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentD isplay.cfm&ContentID=11157
http://www.ala.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Our_Asso ciation/Offices/Intellectual_Freedom3/Challenge_Su pport/Reporting_a_Challenge/Reporting_a_Challenge. htm
The forms need to be revised for reporting censoring by a librarian or censoring by a library. Or alternate forms need to be devised for reporting censoring by a librarian or censoring by a library.
Rights
Parents need to get creative if they can’t be present with their kids at the library. Rather than forbidding anyone else from reading a book ’cause they don’t want their kids to do so, why not try sitting down with the kid and children’s librarian, or teacher, or just the kid, and working out a list of books that are acceptable? I realize it’s not necessarily as easy as I’m making it sound, but if parents have enough time and energy to launch a book challenge, they have enough to come up with a solution that meets their needs AND the community’s.