A Southwick, MA, school librarian says she fears losing her job after introducing a class of second graders to And Tango Makes Three (S & S, 2005)—the fictionalized children’s picture book based on two real-life male penguins at New York’s Central Park Zoo. In the book, the penguins share a nest like other penguin couples and together nurture a fertilized egg, then raise the chick. Johanna Habeisen, a library media teacher now in her 11th year at Woodland Elementary in southwestern Massachusetts, received a March 23 letter from her principal, Kimberley Saso, which the librarian considered intimidating. “Hopefully you will take this matter seriously and refrain from disseminating information that supports alternative styles of living,” Saso wrote. “Further infractions may result in discipline up to and including suspension and/or termination of employment.” Saso’s letter went on to detail two other alleged infractions by Halbeisen. “It was noted that this [Tango reading] was not the first time inappropriate material has been shared or been made available to the students by you,” the letter said. One alleged infraction, Saso wrote, involved Halbeisen’s posting of a “Rainbow,” Web site on the school library’s Web page; the second involved the “reading of a book which shared information about a family with two dads.” Halbeisen denies both allegations and says she has no idea what book or Web site is being referred to. In a recent phone interview, Saso seemed to downplay her previous message. “The only thing I want to say is that nobody in the building is in jeopardy of losing tenure,” the principal told SLJ. “We’re moving forward with our own checklist, doing what we need to do in looking at a book.” Because Halbeisen had denied the two alleged infractions, Saso said she was dropping the matter, since she herself was a new principal and had “nothing to substantiate it in the records,” meaning no actual proof. Saso also said she didn’t mean to intimidate the librarian. “It’s more a paperwork trail for me,” she said of her letter. “Hopefully this is as far as it goes. I’m not looking for her to lose her job.” She did say, however, that she sees Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson, Peter Parnell, and Henry Cole, as questionable for young readers. “I’m not against alternate lifestyle[s],” she said. “I’d love that to be available for counselors that work with families that maybe have this situation. But in this society here, in this town anyways… I don’t know if it’s our job to expose [children].” Should Saso and her superintendent pursue suspension of Halbeisen, that move would be the most serious challenge yet for the controversial And Tango Makes Three, “the most challenged book of last year,” according to the Office of Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association (ALA). Erin Byrne, who is associate director of the division, describes 11 known challenges last year. In Southwick there has been no formal parental challenge, only a seeming pre-emptive action by the principal and Supt. Thomas Witham, whom Saso has consulted with from the start. Importantly, Halbeisen was not the educator reading Tango to the second graders. Instead, a substitute teacher did the read-aloud as part of Halbeisen’s unit on “different kinds of families.” The substitute took the book to Saso. Here, the two main players’ stories diverge. Saso says that the substitute, a parent with children in the district, “didn’t feel it was appropriate.” Halbeisen says the substitute was simply giving administrators a “heads-up” about the book’s contents in case of parental objections during parent-teacher conferences. Halbeisen says she will fight any threat to her job. She objects to the notion that the book should be relegated to a guidance counselor, saying: “This is about children being accepted for who they are, and their family is part of that. If they feel they have to hide that, they are not welcome in that school.” Halbeisen also addresses the irony that her school’s Tango challenge has occurred in a state where marriage between same-sex couples has been legal since 2004. She says that, initially, after the March letter, she began “pulling everything that had any reference to families with two moms or two dads. “Then [I said to myself] ‘Wait a minute! You’re in Massachusetts!’ [Now] I say, ‘Yeah, but all the people with the stereotypes didn’t leave.’”