Some busybody bitch with far too much time on her hands decided to make it her goal to get a book banned from the local middle school library, and she succeeded.
I have read the book in question and I don’t object to it for my children. See how that works? They are MY kids. I get to make the decisions on what they read or don’t read!
If she doesn’t want her precious little muffins to read the book, then fine, don’t allow them to read it!
I’m thinking that since she has decided to usurp my parental rights, then I will just take my kids over to her house, knock on the door, and leave them on her doorstep when she answers. Good luck getting my 10 year old to eat any fruits or veggies. The 16 year old doesn’t drive so she better get used to hauling her around everywhere. Oh yeah, the 16 year old (who read the banned book) is a terrific student and is looking at some pretty pricey universities. Hope the bitch has plenty of money saved up!
You are right. The superintendent turns out to be a completely spineless wuss-ass.
I was actually feeling pretty good about the principal and the parents that reviewed the book and didn’t cave in to the pressure to ban it. I knew it was too good to last.
I guess technically it wasn’t banned. It was moved to the high school library.
Ok, color me confused. When my kiddies were in school I had to sign a waiver every time they wanted to check out a library book that “might” be controversial. After innumerable waivers I finally wrote a letter to the school principal saying I was ok with my kids reading any book in the library, STOP with the waiver forms please. Life was good.
Why is this not the default way to handle these things? You get to ban the book for your kids. I get to let my kids read anything they want. Win, Win. Well, in all honesty I think my kids win more, BYMMV.
Oh puh-leez. They didn’t ban the books, they moved the books to the high school. If your kid wants to read it, they can walk up there and get it. In fact, I bet they’d even to an interlibrary transfer.
No, I don’t think middle schoolers can walk into the high school and borrow their books, nor will they interlibrary loan a book to the middle school that has been removed from their library. The OP could go to the public library and get it for her kids, but for some kids, the only source of books they have is the school library, and they’ve been deprived of access.
This book is in our middle school library, and several of my students have read it but I haven’t. I’m certainly going to now. I second Miller’s question: what is supposedly so objectionable about this book?
This is soooo stupid I’m not sure how to respond. If they took the books out of the MS they will surely not let a MS child check out the book from a HS, nor get it thru interlibrary loan. If they would allow that, why not let the kids check it out directly thru the MS library?
And where are you living that you can walk from the MS to the HS? I live in a town of 30,000 and it’s two miles from the MS to the HS.
Maybe things are way more high tech than when I was in junior high in the early 1990s (well, I know they are), but there was no way of telling what books they had at the high school from the junior high. If I’d wanted to read a book and they didn’t have it at my school library, I’d go to the city library. The high school, for a seventh grader, was a Forbidden Zone, full of tall strangers. It never would have occurred to me to go to the high school, although it wasn’t that far away.
Chavez knew the reality. If he didn’t ban the book that the tight-asses had targeted, he’d be hearing all kinds of complaints from them. So he took the easy way out and caved in to the people who yell the most.
And the lesson is? Start protesting. Picketing his office and complain about him by name to the media and call him up at three in the morning to register your disapproval. So the next time he’s faced with making the same decision, he’ll decide it’s less grief for him to keep the book on the shelf than it is for him to ban it.
It’s not that I think the book should be removed from the library collection, but how she taking away your decision as to what your kids read or don’t read? Assuming you approve, your kids are still free to buy the book or borrow it from another library. They just can’t take it out of that library. But I’d imagine there are a lot of books that library doesn’t have.
The thing is it’s not just 2 miles (each way). Kids get bussed to school and get bussed home. So it’s about 9 miles from my neighborhood to the MS, then the kid has to walk two miles from the MS to the HS and then walk two miles back. But, by that time the bus home has been gone for about 2 hours. This is American suburbia, whether it’s right or wrong.
And this is not a new thing. I lived in a town of 35,000 as a MS, HS kid back in the late 60’s. It was about 5 miles from my house to the JrHigh (MS hadn’t been invented yet) and 11 miles to the HS I was assigned to (and they were not in the same direction). Walking was not really an option.
And for the record: Get off my lawn, ya youngster.
I’m thinking you don’t know how libraries work and what the point of libraries is. If everyone could afford to buy the book we wouldn’t need libraries at all. Every one would have their own library. Unfortunately this is not the case.
In addition, not everyone in the US lives in a municipality that has a public library. If you are in such a situation you have to pay to borrow books from a semi-local library. The cost can be quit high. So when books are banned, willy-nilly, from the school library it can hurt the least advantaged the most.
My point is; if you don’t want your kids to read a book, ban your kids from reading it, don’t take the book away from other kids.
Interesting idea would be if the bookstores in the area were to suddenly have a bazillion copies in stock and some anonymous person just felt it necessary to provide advertisement of said fact… “LOCALLY BANNED BOOK READILY AVAILABLE AT JOE’S BOOKSTOP!” or whatever. Kind of like the approach of letting your neighbors know of someone unwanted moving into the area. Hell, if I still lived in Austin, I’d be happy to find creative ways to thrawt the Lord and Ruler of All Who Knows What’s Best for Everybody Else’s Kid.