Censorship Roundup

By Staff -- School Library Journal, 10/1/2004

Ansonia, CT: Middle school students may have trouble finding copies of One Fat Summer (Harper & Row, 1977) by Robert Lipsyte. The coming-of-age novel was pulled from the local schools' display at the Ansonia Public Library, following a parental complaint about the book's content.

Parents objected to a paragraph describing the masturbation fantasy of a teenage boy. School officials asked the library to remove the book from its special display of titles for middle school students. The book will remain in circulation on the public library's regular shelves.

Layton, UT: When a local patron at the central branch of the Davis County Library found all the swear words crossed out in five of the 10 titles of the series, Murder, She Wrote (Signet) by Jessica Fletcher, she contacted a local reporter to see if they could nab the culprit. "The swear words were still visible under the scrawl of a black marker, they'd just been changed," says Pete Giacoma, library director of the Davis County Library System. "There were lots of 'hecks' and 'goshes' written over the offending words." The case remains unsolved.

Montgomery County, TX: The Montgomery Memorial Library System (MMLS) recently received at least 20 challenges to young adult gay fiction with positive themes. Among the challenged titles are The Sissy Duckling (S & S, 2002) by Harvey Fierstein, Stuck Rubber Baby (DC Comics, 1995) by Howard Cruse, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower (MTV, 1999) by Stephen Chbosky.

Since the challenges started coming in last June, MMLS Library Director Jerilynn A. Williams has received intimidating phone calls at home and had the air let out of her car tires. Many of the challenged titles are recommended on the American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Task Force List. MMLS's book reconsideration committee, a 10-member volunteer group, will review each challenged title.