Mockingbird Debate Continues

The debate around the removal of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel from a Brampton, Ontario, high school earlier this summer washed not only over Toronto-area newspapers, but right here, onto January Magazine. The issues around the removal of To Kill a Mockingbird are more nuanced than they first appeared, as we witnessed under the weight of many carefully considered -- and a few heated -- comments to the piece we ran earlier this week.

The book has been removed from the school, but the battle is far from over, as explained today by The Toronto Star:

As the dust settles around the latest Mockingbird controversy -- in which a principal at a Brampton school removed the book from Grade 10 English curriculum in June after a parent objected to language in the novel -- another debate has emerged: Is there a better book to teach diverse, multiracial, multi-ethnic students in the GTA about race relations and anti-discrimination in 2009?

“It’s a great book, but how many great books, how many classics have been written over the past five decades that might do a better a job in dealing with these issues?” said George Elliott Clarke, a writer and English professor at the University of Toronto who specializes in African-Canadian literature.

And fair enough: if I were looking for a book to inform children about African-Canadian issues, well ... To Kill a Mockingbird would not be the place to look. But is that why high school students are assigned reading? As I said in a comment to that earlier post, choosing books for young people to read based on the lessons we can cram in is like giving them medicine. Or Brussels sprouts. It’s good for them? Oh stop! Reading is magic. That’s the lesson we need to teach.

To Kill a Mockingbird is slender and engaging. It’s a wonderful book, in many ways, but it’s not a complicated one. Even reluctant readers might find themselves discovering fiction in a way they hadn’t before.

So replace Harper Lee’s book. OK. But do it with something that will help illuminate the place in each child that might otherwise be left dark. The place where they discover that reading is not only about accomplishment, not simply about finishing the assignment, but about the same joy and enjoyment extracted from the other activities they undertake at their leisure. That’s the lesson -- the gift -- that they will carry through their lifetimes. What books will accomplish that?

Ontario High School Bans To Kill a Mockingbird

This item from The Toronto Star is just sad:

The classic literary novel To Kill a Mockingbird is being pulled from the Grade 10 English course at a Brampton high school after a parent complained about the use of a racial epithet in the book.

Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which challenges racial injustice in America's Deep South, will be removed from curriculum at St. Edmund Campion Secondary School following a lone complaint from a parent whose child will be in Grade 10 this September.

Though I’d seen a couple of stage versions over the years and, of course, the movie, I didn’t get around to reading Harper Lee’s acclaimed novel until this year. It was worth the wait: To Kill a Mockingbird is a subtly stunning work of fiction. If you haven’t read the book, add it to your must read list. And if there’s a teenager in your life, perhaps buy a copy for him or her, if only to protest that idiot St. Edmund Campion Secondary School parent who would ban a contemporary masterwork through their own lack of intellect and understanding.

Book Burning Alternative Will Be Considered by Court

When a Milwaukee-area’s demands that Francesca Lia Block’s 1995 young adult novel Baby Be-Bop (HarperCollins) be removed from local libraries was refused, the group decided to try another approach. From American Libraries:

Milwaukee-area citizen Robert C. Braun of the Christian Civil Liberties Union (CCLU) distributed at the meeting copies of a claim for damages he and three other plaintiffs filed April 28 with the city; the complainants seek the right to publicly burn or destroy by another means the library’s copy of Baby Be-Bop. The claim also demands $120,000 in compensatory damages ($30,000 per plaintiff) for being exposed to the book in a library display, and the resignation of West Bend Mayor Kristine Deiss for “allow[ing] this book to be viewed by the public.”

In her 1995 review for Booklist, Frances Bradburn said, “Librarians who are daring -- and caring -- enough to include this evocative, skillfully wrought, and sometimes surrealistic novel in their YA collections will help teenagers begin their adult journey toward love and the realization that, as Dirk’s great-grandmother Gazelle says, ‘Any love that is love is right.’”

Back in Wisconsin, both sides seem to be settling in for a trench war:

For the immediate future, West Bend officials will be dealing with the CCLU’s legal claim. Describing the YA novel by celebrated author Francesca Lia Block as “explicitly vulgar, racial, and anti-Christian,” the complaint by Braun, Joseph Kogelmann, Rev. Cleveland Eden, and Robert Brough explains that “the plaintiffs, all of whom are elderly, claim their mental and emotional well-being was damaged by this book at the library,” specifically because Baby Be-Bop contains the “n” word and derogatory sexual and political epithets that can incite violence and “put one’s life in possible jeopardy, adults and children alike.”

As always, January Magazine urges you to protest book-banning activities by reading a banned book.

Toni Morrison Novel Banned in Michigan High School

I loathe stories like this: stories where a ridiculous controversy leads to the closing of a door. From The Muskegon Chronicle:

A high school English teacher in Shelby has been ordered to remove a book by a Pulitzer- and Nobel-award-winning author from her curriculum after members of the community objected to its profanity, sexual references and violence.

“Song of Solomon,” a book by Toni Morrison about an African-American man living in Michigan, was ordered removed from a list of books students could choose to read in Jane Glerum’s advanced placement English class.

School staff and students say that other books may also be censored after a group of community members began complaining about their content. Those books include “The Color Purple,” a book by Alice Walker about an African-American woman abused and raped by her father and husband, and “Johnny Got his Gun” an anti-war book about a severely wounded soldier by Dalton Trumbo.

There’s more to this story, and I encourage you to read it, if only to fan the smoke around your ears. What are these people thinking? Or are they thinking at all? And how is ignorance preferable to the rich conversation that can result when intelligent young people read books that make them think?

Because here at January Magazine we like to reward those who would ban books by making sure the books protested against get lots of extra attention, in case you missed Morrison’s Song of Solomon, it was published in 1977 by Alfred A. Knopf and the most current paperback edition was published by Vintage in 2004.

Wikipedia tells us that Song of Solomon “won the National Books Critics Award, was chosen for Oprah Winfrey’s popular book club, and was cited by the Swedish Academy in awarding Morrison the 1993 Nobel Prize in literature. Barack Obama has listed it as one of his favorite books of all time.”

This is one of the books that’s been on my personal must-read list for a long time. Thanks to the efforts of a handful of narrow-minded parents in Shelby, Michigan, I’m going to order a copy from my local bookseller right now.

FEMA Pulls Controversial Coloring Book

Maybe it’s not a laughing matter. It strikes me as ironic, though, that on May 1st -- Free Comic Book Day -- USA Today should report that FEMA had a removed a “controversial coloring book,” from their Web site for fear it would prove upsetting to some children. From USA Today:

But Rose Olmsted, coordinator of the Freeborn County Crisis Response Team that produced the book after tornadoes hit Glenville, MN, in 2001, defends the project. She tells the Tribune that it was clearly made “as a tool for parents to use with an adult to help children put meaning to what has happened because words are hard to come up with.”

The cover of the coloring book shows a twister carrying away the roof of a house, a sedan that’s been completely crushed and the World Trade Center with one of the towers in flames and a plane on the approach. Inside, similar images wait for children to add color of, I suppose, varying lurid hue, depending on their own mood and temperament.

“We removed the content from our Web site after reviewing www.FEMA.gov for appropriate material,” said FEMA spokesman John Shea in a statement. “FEMA for Kids assists children in understanding disasters and we will continue to post appropriate material that supports its mission.”

Oddly, I’m a bit torn on this one. On the one hand, governments pulling books for any reason always make us look askance. And a pause is definitely the correct response. And a question.

On the other, I’m not sure a coloring book is really a very good tool for helping children bring meaning to frightening world events. How is coloring discussion? And can’t we just sit down with our kids and talk? Why do their need to be tools involved? In my own experience, children have a lot more going on between the ears than we tend to give them credit for. Trusting them with actual information and engaging them in conversation can be a surprising and bonding experience: enriching for both parties.

Meanwhile, if you want to download the comic for yourself and have a peek, The Smoking Gun ran a link when they broke the story. USA Today’s story is here.

Atwood Classic Not Suitable For Teens?

The suitability of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 classic The Handmaid’s Tale has been challenged at a Toronto school, according to The Toronto Star.

Toronto's public school board is reviewing Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale after one complaint from a parent whose child was studying the novel in a Grade 12 class.

While the board would not discuss the nature of the concern over the 1985 dystopian novel that is used nationwide -- described by some educators as a staple of its genre – a source said it was believed to be over sexuality and criticism of religious fundamentalism.

This is apparently the first time The Handmaid’s Tale has been challenged in Canada, though it ranks 37th on the ALA’s Top 100 most frequently challenged books from 1990 to 2000.

The original article is here. In a follow up editorial, The Star’s Living columnist Antonia Zerbisias answers the challenge, saying, in part:

It's a great book and, like George Orwell’s Animal Farm, required reading for my Cold War generation, and Aldous Huxley’s timeless Brave New World, is exactly the kind of literature needed to stimulate thoughtful discussion amongst adolescents who might not otherwise debate much more than who should win American Idol.
Especially in times like these.

Bunny Suicides Beats Ban and Burning

Stepping up beside the likes of Voltaire’s Candide and Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Andy Riley’s 2003 The Book of Bunny Suicides (Plume) has narrowly avoided being banned at a Portland, Oregon school. From Oregon’s Fox12:

"The Book of Bunny Suicides," by British humorist Andy Riley, follows 100 rabbits as they search for new ways to commit suicide. It has been the focus point of a long-running debate among the school board members since October, when parent Taffey Anderson threatened to burn the book after her 13-year-old son brought it home from school.

Back in 2003 The Book of Bunny Suicides was one of those books that made it into the January Magazine stacks, but didn’t make the cut for review. And why? Well, certainly not because we didn’t want you to know about it. Honestly: the book just seemed too stupid to bother with. The kind of book -- hmmmm -- a 13-year-old boy might think was deeply funny.

Riley’s drawings are charming enough, but the humor just seemed a bit too 1998: irony for the sake of irony and a little too heavy handed to be seriously considered funny. (Considered seriously funny?) I mean: bunnies in toasters? Meh.

And here’s a banned book tidbit I came across while researching this piece: one of my favorite books from childhood -- Black Beauty, Anna Sewell’s wonderful 1877 novel about a horse -- was banned in South Africa in the mid-1950s. Why? Because it had the word “black” in the title.

Celebrating Banned Books

It still strikes us that the best way to celebrate Banned Books Week -- which began September 27th and will run until October 4th -- is to find a contested book and read it. Think about it: what would happen if we all did that? How would it make those who challenged books feel if they knew that the most their attentions accomplished was to make more people read the books they would ban?

To that end, here’s the American Library Association’s list of most challenged books of 2007. As you’ll see, there’s something here for everyone:

1) And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
Reasons: Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group

2) The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Violence

3) Olive’s Ocean, by Kevin Henkes
Reasons: Sexually Explicit and Offensive Language

4) The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman
Reasons: Religious Viewpoint

5) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
Reasons: Racism

6) The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language,

7) TTYL, by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

8) I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
Reasons: Sexually Explicit

9) It’s Perfectly Normal, by Robie Harris
Reasons: Sex Education, Sexually Explicit

10) The Perks of Being A Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

And while we’re at it, here’s the ALA’s list of most frequently challenged authors of 2007:

1) Robert Cormier
2) Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
3) Mark Twain
4) Toni Morrison
5) Philip Pullman
6) Kevin Henkes
7) Lois Lowry
8) Chris Crutcher
9) Lauren Myracle
10) Joann Sfar

The ALA’s Banned Books Week Web site is here. And please ignore the Los Angeles Times’ cooler-than-thou arms akimbo posturing here. Because talking about reading is good. And actually reading is even better. And anything that gets us thinking about and talking about reading is good. Period. So there.

Now go read a banned book.

Book Banning and Witch Hunting and Wannabe Veeps, Oh My

Over at the Huffington Post, screenwriter and director Ronald F. Maxwell goes in way deep on a number of issues. Some of them are even related, but all are deeply interesting.

Who would have thought, mere weeks ago, that Americans would need to be concerned with book banning and witch hunting in this day and age? By his precipitous choice of a running mate, Senator John McCain has inadvertently riled some murky Alaskan back-waters. And this is a good thing, because neither book banning nor witch hunting should go unnoticed or unexposed.

But Maxwell’s erudite screed doesn’t just concern itself with Alaskan governor-turned-veep hopeful Sarah Palin. Rather, it touches on a long list of tenuously connected subjects: poet John Milton’s 1644 comments on book burning; witch hunting through the ages and other things. But the core issue here -- the one on which Maxwell hangs all the others -- is Palin’s attempt to ban a book or books unknown at the Wasilla, Alaska, library while Palin was a resident in the town, as well as its mayor:

Perhaps we should be more concerned with the imploding economy or questions of war and peace. Perhaps the banning of books or the hunting of witches are just side issues, whacky anachronisms meant to distract us from what's really important. And after all, in fairness, following the tempest in Wasilla’s teapot no book was actually banned by the then Mayor Palin. It’s an annoyance to have to deal with what we consider to be settled issues. The cancer is in remission we tell ourselves. It's really not a problem. So better to just ignore it. Let's not make a mountain out of a mole hill.

This is an elegant piece of writing and brings up several important issues. Being reminded of Milton’s words were, for me, alone worth the price of admission. “Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature,” Milton wrote, “God’s image, but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.”

Maxwell’s Huffington Post piece is here.

Get Ready to Read A Banned Book

This year Banned Books Week runs from September 27th to October 4th.

From the Banned Books Week Web site:

Banned Books Week is the only national celebration of the freedom to read. It was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than a thousand books have been challenged since 1982. The challenges have occurred in every state and in hundreds of communities. People challenge books that they say are too sexual or too violent. They object to profanity and slang, and protest against offensive portrayals of racial or religious groups -- or positive portrayals of homosexuals. Their targets range from books that explore the latest problems to classic and beloved works of American literature.

And just in case you think things are getting better, think again: the American Library Association reports that over 400 books were challenged just last year.

So get ready now. We’ll remind you closer to the day but, meanwhile, make plans to read a banned book. Or three.

Muslim-Themed Novel “Shelved”

It seems to me that, after 9-11, there was a lot of talk about the fact that terrorists could only succeed if they managed to cow us, bow us, influence our course. Yet here we are again. From The Guardian:

A romantic novel about Aisha, the child bride of the prophet Muhammad, has been withdrawn because its publisher feared possible terrorist acts by Muslim extremists.

The Jewel of the Medina, a first book by Sherry Jones, 46, was to have been released on August 12 by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House. But the publishers apparently panicked after Islamic scholars objected to the work.

From all accounts, we’re talking about a fairly innocuous historical novel. Think Gone With the Wind with a lot of veils and sand. It was never meant to be an “important” book and the author appears to have no political agenda. From BBC News:

Jones has never visited the Middle East, but spent several years studying Arab history and said the novel was a synthesis of all she had learned.

“They did have a great love story,” Jones said of Muhammad and A'isha.

The author, who has just completed a sequel examining her heroine's later life, is free to sell her book to other publishers, Random House said.

So while the word “postponed” has been used a few times, Random has clearly pulled the plug and, for the moment at least, The Jewel of Medina is dead in the water. Chalk up another 10 points for the thought police. We live in dangerous times, indeed.

The Stone Angel to Open at a Theater Kinda Near You

Though it opened at both the Vancouver and Toronto Film Festivals last year, I’m still stoked about the May 9th Alliance Films limited release of Kari Skogland’s film adaptation of The Stone Angel by Canadian author Margaret Laurence (1926-1987). From the Alliance Web site:

Based on the best-selling novel by Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel is the story of feisty firecracker Hagar Shipley (Christine Horne, Oscar Winner Ellen Burstyn). Her passionate heart has always ruled her head and her choices have put her at odds with family and friends. With her life nearly behind her, she sets out in search of a way to reconcile herself to her turbulent past. Through her reflections we come to know a passionate and rebellious young bride, her love for her two sons, the freedoms she claimed, and the joys she denied herself.

Alliance’s PR-speak sounds as though the film might be a lamed-up version of Laurence’s powerful novel. (I mean “feisty firecracker”? WTF?) You can tell Alliance figures the movie is destined for the arthouse circuit because the Web site tells us The Stone Angel will be “in cinemas” on May 9th.

I love, also, how everyone keeps talking about “Laurence’s best-selling novel.” (They break it up like that too: “best-selling.”) But, check it: the book was published in 1964. Was it a bestseller? Maybe so, but whatever gauges they used to count such things are long gone. The Stone Angel is beyond bestselling. It is important, beloved and, when it isn’t being contested, it is taught in schools.

Kari Skogland is one of Canada’s hottest young directors and was named one of The Hollywood Reporter’s 10 Directors to Watch in 2001. Since then she’s put in a lot of miles, including writer/director on 2002’s Liberty Stands Still with Wesley Snipes, Linda Fiorentino and Oliver Platt; director on 2005’s Chicks With Sticks and she is currently in post-production on Fifty Dead Men Walking with Jim Sturgess, Rose McGowan and Ben Kingsley.

But for our purposes, The Stone Angel is the one that matters. Back in October, Variety summed the film up thusly:

A tastefully reverent, fundamentally sincere treatment of Margaret Laurence's 1964 Manitoba-based novel, a staple for Canada’s 12th graders, “The Stone Angel” plays precisely as expected from a incident-laden, multigenerational and metaphorical book crammed into a conventional running time. Local auds may thrill at this visual embodiment of literary treasure, but the story won't resonate elsewhere beyond fests and some ancillary.

But, hell: it’s Laurence, right? It’s Skogland. Someone just tell me where to sign; where to stand.

Meanwhile, check my fangirl stats: here's a review I did of an anniversary republication of The Stone Angel back in 1998. You read that right: a decade ago. Fortunately, the book has changed not at all. That’s the beauty of reviewing classics.

Tintin Controversy

At the start of the year I reported on a special celebration of the Tintin comics in France to mark what would have been writer Herge’s 100th birthday. The article indicated that many writers recall spending their youth in the company of Tintin, Snowy, Captain Haddock and the eclectic gang as they traveled the world seeking adventure.

With the upcoming big screen adaptation of Tintin by Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg we report some controversy in respect to publisher Little, Brown’s re-issues of the Tintin Tales. The 1931 title, Tintin in the Congo, has reportedly been pulled from the publishing schedule due to its portrayal of colonial Black Africans. It seems there has been a groundswell of opinion to ban this book from many sources. The BBC reported earlier this year:

The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) is calling on high street books to pull a Tintin adventure from its shelves over claims it is racist. Complaints about Tintin in the Congo have led to Borders and Waterstones moving it to their adult section.

A spokeswoman said the book contained “words of hideous racial prejudice, where the ‘savage natives’ look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles.” Borders said they are committed to let their “customers make the choice.”

Publishers Weekly also reported on this controversial re-issue:

The book was first published in 1931, then updated and colorized in the 1940s. While this is the first U.S. publication of the newer version, San Francisco-based publisher Last Gasp released a black and white fascimile edition of the original in 2002. Also as part of its centenary celebration of Hergé’s birth, Little, Brown will publish a boxed set containing all 24 Tintin books in November. The set will include all its previously published Tintin books, as well as the final three. Valerie Koehler, owner of Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston, Tex., said she could not decide where she will shelve Congo until she sees the book. But she said the series is not very popular in her store: “We’re not talking about Harry Potter here. By and large, the mom who walks in here who grew up in Houston, she doesn’t know who Tintin is.” Leslie Reiner, owner of Inkwood Books in Tampa Bay, Fla., plans on shelving the book in her store’s graphic novels section. She said Tintin books “haven't been selling that well, but I anticipate more sales with the fall release.” Barnes & Noble and Borders did not respond to requests for comment.

This pressure has lead Little, Brown to reconsider the re-release of Tintin in the Congo, as reported in Publishers Weekly:

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, which had been planning to publish Tintin in the Congo, a book criticized for its racist, Colonial-era depictions of Africans, has quietly pulled the title from its fall list, PW has learned. The publisher also said it will not include the book in a forthcoming box set of all 24 books in the Tintin series.

Publicist Melanie Chang did not give a reason for the standalone book’s cancellation, but of its omission from the box set she said, “Given the controversy surrounding the Congo title, we felt including it in the box set would eclipse the true intention of the collection, which is to showcase Hergé’s extraordinary art and his remarkable contribution to the graphic arts.”

The republication of classic works of fiction that reflected the attitudes of a less enlightened generation can cause controversy and even confusion. Remember the original title of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians?

Read a Banned Book. Now

Though a whisper of controversy caresses Banned Books Week this year, the spirit of the beast remains untouched. From the American Library Association’s Web site:

First observed in 1982, Banned Books Week reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted.

Nor does the ALA go it alone:

The event is sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the American Library Association (ALA), the Association of American Publishers, the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the National Association of College Stores. It is endorsed by the Library of Congress Center for the Book.

The list of most challenged books of last year is full of great reading material, making it super easy to find a challenged book to choose. The list includes And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, “for homosexuality, anti-family, and unsuited to age group;” both The Bluest Eye and Beloved by Toni Morrison “for sexual content, offensive language, and unsuited to age group;” and The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier “for sexual content, offensive language, and violence.”

This year, Banned Book Week runs from September 29 to October 6, 2007. To find an event in your area, check out the ILoveLibraries.org BBW Events Finder here.

Teen Boys Scarred and Scared by Lesbian Sex Book

This one definitely comes to us via the WTF department:

A Bentonville, Ark., man is seeking $20,000 from the city after his two teenage sons found a book on lesbian sex on a public library bookshelf.

He also wants the library director fired.

Earl Adams said his 14- and 16-year-old sons were “greatly disturbed” after finding the book, titled “The Whole Lesbian Sex Book.” Adams said the book caused “many sleepless nights in our house.”

There’s just so much wrong with these there short paragraphs. In the first place, I’m having a tough time imagining the teen boys who would be put off their feed by literary descriptions of lesbian sex, let alone tell their father about it. And just in case you’re wondering what sort of porn the Bentonville, Arkansas library is stocking, “The book, by Felice Newman, is a sex guide deemed suitable for all public libraries, according to the Library Journal, which the Bentonville library uses to decide what to place on its shelves.”

It astonishes me that Bentonville has acted so quickly and pulled the book. Just about every library and bookstore in the world has at least one copy of something that will disturb someone on some level. (I routinely avoid photographic depictions of insects, for instance.) If a book bothers you, it’s very easy to avoid it. (I know this from personal experience. Back up a few lines to see about the whole insect thing.) What I never get is how some people are so concerned about what other people are reading/eating/watching on television. Please: if something bugs you, don’t read it. Just leave the library shelves -- and the good people who keep them stocked -- alone.

And it should be mentioned that all of this has nothing at all to do with The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden. AP recently called the Iggulden’s book “a deliberately retro tome that has become the publishing sensation of the year in Britain.” The book has been on UK bestseller lists for months and was named Book of the Year at the Galaxy British Book Awards in March. Again from AP:

Exuding the brisk breeziness of Boy Scout manuals and Boy’s Own annuals, “The Dangerous Book” is a childhood how-to guide that covers everything from paper airplanes to go-carts, skipping stones to skinning a rabbit.

The Book Standard suggests that The Dangerous Book for Boys has sold “more than 550,000 copies to date” and all of this without even a hint of lesbian sex.

Lest They Forget

I must have read Mark Mathabane’s moving autobiography, Kaffir Boy, pretty close to the time it was first published in the mid-1980s. I remember the quiet power of this book and the way I felt resonations from it months -- maybe even years -- after I’d read it. Mathabane’s book did not leave me untouched.

A couple of decades later and so much has changed. For one thing, Kaffir Boy is based in South Africa and centered around Apartheid and, of course, Apartheid is no more. That doesn’t detract from the power of this book, however, even if it is pleasing to realize that many of the horrors Mathabane wrote about are history. After all, we still read books about the Holocaust, decades after the Second World War. We still read Anne Frank. And we’ve come to read Maus. And so many more. It’s good for us -- healthy -- to remember all of the things humans are capable of: the bad as well as the good. Literature can deliver this in a way that is arguably more personal and immediate than any other medium. Read Kaffir Boy now and -- for a few hours -- the intervening decades may as well not have happened. You share in Mathabane’s confusion and degradation and pain and -- ultimately -- you are part of his triumph. It’s a singularly worthwhile book. Shocking. Horrifying. Uplifting. And, when all is said and done, important.

Some parents in Burlingame, California don’t agree. Kaffir Boy has recently been pulled from the school library and removed from the high school curriculum.

“Part of the reason we felt it was appropriate,” Principal Ted Barone told the San Mateo Daily Journal, “was that kids today see violence through movies, video games and books. There’s so much violence and sexual violence, even in newspapers. We felt it was important because it gets so dehumanized. This is very humanized. You come to love this guy, the main character, it makes it like your best friend went through it.”

But more than a few parents of Burlingame higher schoolers did not agree. Though, in fairness, the Burlingame school system isn’t the only one to wonder if Kaffir Boy is suitable reading for young adults. Mathabane’s book has been on the ALA’s most banned list for many years.

You can read the San Mateo Daily Journal’s piece here.

Hitler Tome Vetoed During Freedom to Read Week

When the Saskatoon Public Library asked Yann Martel to read from any banned or challenged book for Freedom to Read Week, the author of Life of Pi chose Mein Kampf.

“It's a horrible book,” Martel told The National Post, “but a horribly important book, because you get in the brain of one of the monsters of the 20th century.”

However, for a CBC Radio Saskatchewan interview in support of the event, Martel was told not to read from the book.

The National Post has the story here.

Kicked Right in the Tiddlywinks

This past weekend it cracked me up to follow the coverage of the children’s book that has everyone up in arms about the use of the word “scrotum.”

Now, last time I checked, scrotum wasn’t a “bad” word. No one calls someone else that in the playground or tells someone what to do with theirs. If they have one.

However, this year’s recipient of the Newbery Medal, The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron, will be banned in some libraries for Patron’s use of that irksome word. In the book, a 10-year-old orphan called Lucky overhears someone explaining that a rattlesnake bit his dog in the scrotum. From The Higher Power of Lucky:

Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much. It sounded medical and secret, but also important.

So, fast forward to the book winning the Newbery, some school librarians getting their mitts on the book and ... all hell breaks loose. According to The New York Times:

The inclusion of the word has shocked some school librarians, who have pledged to ban the book from elementary schools, and reopened the debate over what constitutes acceptable content in children’s books

OK: so never mind debating if “scrotum” is an acceptable word for young’uns to read. (Fer cryin’ out loud!) What cracked me up was the coverage given to the issue by two really well-known media outlets, The New York Times and Associated Content. I won’t go so far as to say someone borrowed heavily from someone else’s lede, but ... well, here they both are. You decide.

The Times piece opens thus:

The word “scrotum” does not often appear in polite conversation. Or children’s literature, for that matter.

And from Associated Content, datelined one day earlier:

It’s rare to hear the word “scrotum,” in polite conversation. Seeing it on the first page of a children’s book has some parents and teachers up in arms.

I don’t know about you, but “polite conversation” is not the first place my mind goes when I hear (or read) the word “scrotum.” And, you know, I beg to differ with both of these publications. Scrotum is totally acceptable in polite conversation. Case in point, of the three sentences that follow, which would you mostly likely use at a cocktail party?

1. The baseball whacked John right in the sack.

2. When the baseball hit John in the nuggets, he couldn’t see straight for a week.

3. When the baseball hit John in the scrotum, play was over for him for the balance of the game.

See what I’m saying? You want polite conversation? If what you’re describing is that part of the anatomy, then “scrotum” is totally the way to go as opposed to ... you know ... well, all of the alternatives.

From The New York Times again:

The book has already been banned from school libraries in a handful of states in the South, the West and the Northeast, and librarians in other schools have indicated in the online debate that they may well follow suit. Indeed, the topic has dominated the discussion among librarians since the book was shipped to schools.

For scrotum? Are you serious? If anyone is on the anti-scrotum side of the fence, please e-mail me and let me know what we’re supposed to call it. Or are we meant to pretend it doesn’t exist? Pretend that we’re all like Barbies and Kens under our clothes. (All the bumps without the machinery.)

More Times:

“I think it’s a good case of an author not realizing her audience,” said Frederick Muller, a librarian at Halsted Middle School in Newton, N.J. “If I were a third- or fourth-grade teacher, I wouldn’t want to have to explain that.”

C’mon Fred: give it the old college try. It’s not that hard. How would you explain a thumb? A clavicle? A coccyx? Scrotum is like one of those: a bit of the body, nothing nasty or magical. Nothing in the least bit mystical. Our own discomfort in explaining this to children says a lot more about us than it does about them. Or Patron’s book.

Honestly? I worry about the children raised in a world without scrotums. You should too. What are they supposed to do? How are they meant to function? Or do we expect to raise them to adulthood calling their sensitive bits by ridiculous cutsie names?

Naked Stars Get Nixed

Superstars, a book by New York-based Singaporean photographer Leslie Kee has been banned in the photographer’s home country.

According to the Khaleej Times, the book will not be “allowed to be sold in the conservative city-state.”

The Khaleej Times reports that Superstars “contains portraits of 300 stars such as Aaron Kwok and Gong Li taken in New York where [is] Kee based.”