Ann Brashares's Sisterhood Series Under Fire
RSSBy Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 03/08/2010
Ann Brashares may have imagined a sisterhood of girl talk, romantic angst, and friendship—but one mother in Fond du Lac, WI, believes her child, and potentially others, shouldn’t experience this relationship until high school.
“I know some parents want the book in the school,” says Ann Wentworth, who has filed challenges to Brashares’ Sisterhood in the Traveling Pants series (Delacorte, 2001) along with books by authors Sonya Sones and Julie Halpern, for sexual content she believes is inappropriate for books in Theisen Middle School’s library.
“They have as many rights as I do,” she says. “And I have as many rights at they do. I just want our taxpayers to know where the money is going.”
Although Wentworth filed challenges to seven books earlier this year, only one against Sones’ One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies (S & S, 2004), has been heard. The school district’s reconsideration committee unanimously overturned that in February. Wentworth has appealed that decision to the Fond du Lac school board and now plans to pursue just two challenges—one against Brashares’s Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood (Delacorte, 2007) and one against Halpern’s Get Well Soon (Feiwel,, 2007).
The mother is steadfast in her decision to pursue this course, which doesn’t surprise author Sones who has made the American Library Association’s most challenged authors list in recent years.
“Once a person is a kind of person who will challenge a book, there’s pretty much nothing I can say that will change their mind,” she says.
Wentworth admits she doesn’t expect Sones’ book to be removed from the school library —but she’d like to see some changes in how books are chosen at the school level and some ability to make choices on what her own children can read.
That choice, however, is almost in play says John Whitsett, coordinator of curriculum, instruction and assessment for the Fond du Lac School District, who chairs the reconsideration committee. The district has recently launched a new digital program, which features a parental restriction alert system, says Whitsett.
“Parents can make sure their children don’t read anything on witchcraft, or by a certain author,” he says. “We’re literally training the media specialists on this [this week], and rolling these features as soon as we can get them.”
But even that level of restriction concerns Beverly Horowitz, publisher for Delacorte Press, which prints the Sisterhood series. She believes that children innately know when they’re able to digest information—and when they’re truly not ready.
While the Sisterhood series deals with girls in their high school and early college years, and delves with issues of pregnancy and sex in the final book, Horowitz believes that students can differentiate that these are concerns most middle schoolers won’t face.
“I think adults often forget that children are self-protective,” she says. “And children will read something they feel uncomfortable about and close that book. I think we need to allow them to have that power and that credit.”
But Wentworth is not so sure. While she knows that these books are in the public library, she notes that she’s with her children when they visit their local branch, see what they’re picking, and discuss their choices. And while she likes the idea of the new digital monitoring program—she has yet to see it working. Primarily she’s concerned that books be appropriate in the first place.
To that, Whitsett somewhat understands. To the idea of banning books however, he does not.
“We try to adhere to parents wishes as much as we can,” he says. “But removing books has all kinds of first amendment implications. And we can’t deny someone’s freedoms.”
