Censorship Roundup

By Staff -- School Library Journal, 7/1/2005

Overland Park, KS. A literary anthology is under review at Blue Valley North High School in Overland Park, KS, after a local resident objected to a Margaret Atwood story in the collection that concerns rape. Charlie Morasch of Leawood, KS, whose three children graduated from the school, objected to a short story called “Rape Fantasies.” The work of fiction—in which a woman discusses her concerns about being raped—is contained in the short-story collection Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound & Sense (Thomson Learning-Heinle & Heinle, 2002) edited by Thomas R. Arp and Greg Johnson. The book is on a list of resources used by the school’s English department, according to Russell Kokoruda, executive director for school administration at the suburban Kansas City district. He says the district is reviewing five other book challenges and that the English curriculum “is under attack.” The Atwood story and other books represent “a continual push by many educators toward more sexualization,” says Morasch. “I’m concerned about the culture. I’m concerned about the schools.”

St. Cloud, MN. Minnesota parents who sought to remove a book that includes a depiction of a child with two mothers failed to have their request approved May 23 by a local school committee. The parents had asked that the book All Families Are Special (Whitman, 2003) by Norma Simon be removed from general circulation in Sauk Rapids-Rice elementary school libraries and placed in a special section where it could be used only under the supervision of parents or teachers. Greg Vandal, superintendent of the 3,700-pupil school district roughly 70 miles north of Minneapolis, says he “was quite pleased with the outcome” of the vote. At a May 17 hearing to discuss the proposed restriction, a local library media specialist spoke in favor of keeping the book available while activists from both sides voiced their views. Speakers offered “very [religious] fundamentalist testimony and there were activists on exactly the other side,” explains Vandal. The committee, after deliberating in a closed-door session on May 23 delivered its recommendation to the school board to keep the book in general circulation, Vandal says.