On Monday, a California school district official read part of “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou, at a council meeting in order to shock council members into banning it.
Remind me again? What year is this? Because sometimes? I forget.
And thanks, Jezebel, for the link.
Dating Jesus 
I’m not for censorship or anything but are there some books that maybe aren’t appropriate for a childrens library? I’ve never read what they are referring to but in a school library children can check out a book and read it without parental knowledge and I would like to be the one who decides when rape scenes are acceptable reading for my child.
I read just about any book I wanted to when I was a kid, and my parents did not approve beforehand, either. That might have been because they were distracted, but if I ran into a book that confused or scared me, I simply put it back.
I guess I’m thinking of younger children. I was very sensitive and ended up coming across some things that still haunt me if only because of the way my child’s brain processed it at the time.
I would think high school would be perfectly reasonable.
That’s true. And every child is different. What might blow right by one child will smack the other one right in the nightmares.
Well, I think we all know how repressive my childhood was, but even my mother had me read that book in high school. In fact, we read it together.
Wow. That’s pretty stinkin’ cool of your mother.
Send them a copy of this.
And a box of crunchberries.
Isn’t that incredible? And should those be fresh crunchberries, straight from the vine?
Somehow just knowing Mr. Natural is out there somewhere kicking ass just makes me feel more secure….spiritually.
No fresh crunchberries. They get the ones dried out, shipped to China, coated with powdered melamine, put in a box painted with lead, and left to sit six months on a shelf before being shipped back.
…which reminds me, I need to go have breakfast! Thanks for that visual image, Leftover.
Once I was about 12 and able to get on the bus and go to the library on my own, no one monitored what I read. (Not so much before that, either.) Of course, my tastes ran to Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Richard Armour, Joseph Heller, and Alistair MacLean, so maybe no one thought there was a need to interfere.
Same here. and I came from a highly-monitored childhood. For some reason, no one thought to check my reading material and I shall be forever grateful for that. I remember reading Philip Roth and taking the book to read aloud the dirty parts to one of my brothers. BIG fun.