Censorship Roundup

DeLand, FL: Rejecting a mother’s claim that the novel Cracking India (Milkweed, 1991) by Bapsi Sidhwa is pornographic, a review committee recently said that the Volusia County School District should be allowed to assign the book to 11th and 12th graders. Vikki Reed filed a complaint against the book in September after it was assigned to her daughter’s 11th-grade world literature course at DeLand High School.

Reed objected to two passages in the novel, about a young girl coming of age during the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan. A 25-member review committee said the passages involving oral sex and sexual fantasies weren’t enough to ban the book. “In eight years of my being here, this is the first time a challenge has made it this far,” says Chris Caldwell, the school board’s deputy superintendent for instructional services. Superintendent Margaret Smith expects to make a final decision on whether the book will remain in schools before the end of the year.

Littleton, CO: The school board for the Littleton Public School District has pulled all copies of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (Knopf, 1970) from the shelves of its high school libraries, despite protests from teachers and students who read passages from the novel while conducting sit-ins at their school libraries. The board decision to remove the novel from libraries and reading lists was in response to a parent who challenged its explicit description of incestuous rape. The board voted 3–2 to ban the book this fall, rejecting the recommendation of a review committee that it be limited to 11th and 12th graders. While students and teachers are disappointed, some believe that the challenge has promoted discussions that enrich the learning process. “This is the kind of academic debate where we want our students engaged,” says Mollie McDonald, director of curriculum instruction and assessment for the Littleton Public School District.

Westmoreland, NY: The Westmoreland Central School District has denied a parent’s request to remove Chris Crutcher’s novel Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes (Greenwillow, 2003) from the high school curriculum. Upset by the young adult novel’s graphic language, the parent sought to ban the book after discovering her son reading it for a ninth-grade assignment. Initially dissatisfied with a compromise made by her son’s English teacher to substitute the Crutcher book with another title, the parent took her book challenge to Superintendent Toni Kulak, who denied the request. The parent then went before the school board, which also recently voted to keep the book in schools. “It was not an issue,” says Kulak. “We’re going to continue to use the book because we think it’s valuable to our students.”