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Dade County removes novel from school library and reading list
By Andy Johns
Sunday, November 13, 2011


Dade County, Ga., school officials have pulled a book from library shelves and the required high school reading list because of complaints from parents.

Dade County High students had been required to read "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian," but after numerous complaints about vulgarity, racism and anti-Christian content, Superintendent Shawn Tobin decided to remove the book until it could be reviewed by a media center committee.

"Some people thought it was the greatest book ever, and some people thought it was the most perverted book ever," Tobin said.

"The Absolutely True Diary" follows Junior, a misfit teenager growing up on a Washington Indian reservation, as he goes through a year of high school. The National Book Award-winning novel is based more or less on author Sherman Alexie's life.

Tobin said most of the complaints centered on profanity, as well as a depiction of Jesus Christ breaking wind.

"Numerous parents were calling," he said.

Trenton resident Mechele Berry told the Dade County Sentinel she was shocked by the content in the book her son was required to read.

"It was just disgusting," she told the paper. "You know, perversion."

Attempts to reach Berry and other parents were unsuccessful Friday.


But Tobin said he's very cautious about banning books because many classics, such as "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Huckleberry Finn," have some adult themes and word choices.

"There's profanity in it; there's profanity in a lot of books," he said. "My intent is not to start removing books left and right. The idea was to make sure that a child always has an option."

Hamilton County Schools officials said they had not had any complaints about the book.

Tobin said that, in the future, required-reading books would be reviewed by the media center committee. If they are deemed to contain potentially offensive material, teachers will be required to provide an alternative book for students whose parents object.

Dade County is not the first place to ban the Alexie book.

The novel was No. 2 on the American Library Association's list of most frequently challenged books in 2010. The association listed offensive language, racism, sex education, sexually explicit material and violence as reasons for the challenges. Also on the list were "The Hunger Games" at No. 5 and "Twilight" at No. 10.

The book was banned in Stockton, Mo., in 2010 and Richland, Wash., in June, according to newspaper reports. Officials in Richland changed their votes after reading the book, according to the News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash.

The Stockton School Board documented 74 "instances of vulgarity" throughout the novel's 230 pages, according to the Cedar County Republican newspaper.

"We can take this book and we can wrap it in those 20 awards everybody said it won, and you know what? It is still wrong," Richland board member Ken Spurgeon told the paper.

But Pat Scales, chairwoman of the American Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee, said the book was "fabulous" and offers a window into the tough life on the reservation.

"Yes, it's raw in places, but it's raw because the life was. We have our heads in the sand if we don't realize there are people who have to live this way," Scales said. "Every book we read is not going to reflect our own value systems."

Most Challenged Books in Libraries or Public Schools

• "And Tango Makes Three," by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson

• "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian," by Sherman Alexie

• "Brave New World," by Aldous Huxley

• "Crank," by Ellen Hopkins

• "The Hunger Games," by Suzanne Collins

• "Lush," by Natasha Friend

• "What My Mother Doesn't Know," by Sonya Sones

• "Nickel and Dimed," by Barbara Ehrenreich

• "Revolutionary Voices," edited by Amy Sonnie

• "Twilight," by Stephenie Meyer

Source: American Library Association

Richland School Board reverses course on book ban
By Jacques Von Lunen, Tri-City Herald
RICHLAND -- The Richland School Board has reversed last month's decision to ban the use of a young-adult novel by a popular Northwest author in classrooms.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie now is cleared for any grade level in Richland high schools.

The board Monday voted 4-1 to allow Alexie's novel back into schools. Phyllis Strickler this time was the lone dissenter.

On June 14, the board voted 3-2 to remove the book from the district's reading lists. At that time, Mary Guay and Rick Donahoe joined Strickler in voting against Absolutely True.

That had been a mistake, Guay and Donahoe said Monday.

And the board is allowed to revisit a vote when a member who voted with the majority asks for a redo, said Richard Jansons, the board president.

None of the board members had read Absolutely True when they first voted on it. That was the job of the Instructional Materials Committee, or IMC, established a little more than a year ago to review all books used in Richland schools.

Guay and Donahoe thought that the entire IMC read the book before its members gave it mixed reviews last month.

But to speed up the process, IMC members split up in groups. Each group reads a particular book and then shares its findings with the rest of the members.

Once Guay and Donahoe found out that only part of the committee had read the book, they wanted to revisit their votes against it.

"That was my misunderstanding," Donahoe said Monday.

He read the book two days after the June 14 meeting and found it to be "outstanding," he said.

The book is based on Alexie's own upbringing on the Spokane reservation and his attending school in nearby Reardan, a predominantly white farming town.

The book's 14-year-old protagonist struggles with poverty, racism and death.

Those themes, and particularly the main character's perseverance in the face of these challenges, bear important lessons for students, Donahoe said.

"When I'm voting a book out of the classroom, I'm denying parents the right to choose to have that book read by their students," he said.

In the future, he will read every book he will vote on, Donahoe said.

So will the other member who switched her vote from the one she cast four weeks ago.

"I made a big mistake," Guay said. "I will be getting every book we vote on."

Her original vote and its reversal had nothing to do with her facing a challenger in the upcoming school board elections who is an IMC member, Guay said.

All members of the board had read Absolutely True by Monday.

But Jansons said that couldn't be expected to happen for each book -- that's what the IMC is there for.

The district has about 70 books left to review and has given itself six to nine months to do it, he said.

"If the expectation is that (the board) read every one, that's going to take me a while," Jansons said. "But I won't vote to remove a book from the selection before I read it."

Most who spoke up during public input on the book issue appeared to be in favor of allowing the novel in the schools.

Kim Maldonado, a teacher at Hanford High School, said she had thought about using Absolutely True in a 10th-grade support class she taught two years ago.

Her class included mostly "kids from tough backgrounds," Maldonado said. Among them was a Native American youth, whom she asked to review the book before she gave it to the whole class.

"He read it five times," Maldonado said. "It changed his life. It made him understand his heritage and his issues with his father."

The book taught the children in her class that they can get out of the tough situations they were in, she said.

And the character's journey through high school teaches kids that education can better their lives, she said.

Others in support of Alexie's book said that negative reviews focused too much on the few harrowing situations described in it and too little on its overall message of hope and humor.

Two in the small crowd stood to speak out against the novel.

David Garber read from a Wall Street Journal article critical of coarse themes and language in young-adult novels that names Absolutely True as an example. Garber is a member of the IMC and of a group that rates novels based on how much of their contents it finds offensive.

Dave Hedengren questioned if board members lost the ability to know when a book went "over the mark," and equated some of the books taught in Richland schools with internet pornography, which is electronically blocked from school computers.

The district cannot meet the exact standards of every parent in its votes on novels, which is why the last say over what a student reads is with the parent, Jansons said.

"That's why we have the opt-out policy," he said. "I trust the process we're using."

-- Jacques Von Lunen: 582-1402; jvonlunen@tricityherald.com

Book removal can do harm

Re: Dade's removal of a helpful book.

Removing a book from a required reading list can prove more harmful than helpful. The book was probably put on the list for good reasons. The book is about a boy who leaves the reservation school to better himself at a more advanced school. The protagonist shows courage and perseverance with his ability to overcome obstacles.

High schoolers should be mature enough to handle the presented material.

When I was in high school, my mom probably would have been outraged at the content, but exposing me to it was a great thing. When I arrived at college, I wasn't metaphorically slapped in the face like some of my more sheltered peers were by the drinking, drugs and violence that weren't present at my high school.

High school students should be allowed to read books such as the one that Dade removed from their library and reading list. All books have the potential to help readers of all ages, especially those who still have experiences to face in life. This book has the ability to prepare high school students for what is to come.

WHITNEY WHITAKER

Graysville, Tenn.
http://timesfreepress.com/news/2011/nov ... ionletters

Novel shows power of positive thinking

Sherman Alexie's "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian" is a novel about hope in a young boy's journey to self-discovery.

Every adolescent experiences this same pilgrimage that leads him or her to an unearthing of identity.

Alexie's young protagonist faces devastatingly dark and seemingly insurmountable obstacles, these scenes of pain and turmoil characterized and condemned as "perversion" by parents of Dade County students.

These dismal themes are in no way glorified or encouraged by the text. Conversely they are presented through the lens of a hopeful adolescent's perspective to which young readers may easily relate.

He proves strong in the midst of his trials finding hope, joy and love, proving the power of positive thinking.

Readers receive the privilege of learning the valuable lesson of not giving in to despair.

Widely regarded author, lecturer and mythologist Joseph Campbell implores his readers to, "Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy." This is conveyed clearly and in a way to elicit participation from readers and therefore should remain a work of literature read by literature students in any classroom.

CHRISTINA MELTON

Ooltewah