From the Teachers and Librarians, Professionals on the Frontlines of the Battle

I am a reading consultant in an elementary school and have had two books challenged by parents: The Egypt Game and (would you believe) Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. The Egypt Game was challenged because the parent had some concerns about children in the book playing a game that included idol worship.

The class had almost completed reading The Egypt Game when the objection was raised. The book was being used in conjunction with a unit on Egypt. I listened to the parent's concerns and, while I felt that they were somewhat exaggerated, I did eliminate the book from my curriculum. I had heard similar parent objections from other reading consultants and chose to retire the book. 

The concern about Alexander was the use of the word "hate" - as in "I hate lima beans."  The parent wrote the teacher (and me) a scathing three page letter condemning teachers (that would be me) who would use a book with such language.  She also had her mother add another letter to the condemnation.  We spoke to the child and explained the difference between hating people and hating objects.  We didn't hear from the parent again.

Do you have any idea of how many books we would have to eliminate if we had to take out every one that had the word "hate" in it?  I started counting one day and lost track.

Marlene Greene
Gladstone Street School
Cranston, Rhode Island

Several years ago when the Harry Potter books were first becoming popular, our county (Bradford County, FL) had a group of parents (mostly from one religious organization) that wanted the books banned from all school libraries because they believed the books were teaching their children witchcraft.

Our school board formed a commitee to read the book and make a decision. The committe included school board members, parents, members of the religious organization and school librarians. The committe voted to allow the books to stay in the libraries and remain accessable to all students. If a parent did not want their child to check out the books, they had to write a letter to the school principal which would then be shared with the librarian. Those children would not be able to check out the books but all others could. I believe we only recieved 2 or 3 letters asking that their child not be able to check out Harry Potter books. Teachers were also asked not to use the books as class read-alouds.

Why can't people just enjoy a good story?

Debbie Powell
Starke Elementary School
Starke, FL

I heard a great comment from Brad Strickland, who writes scary stories for kids.  When asked, why do you write such scary stories for children?, he replied "Because they need a safe place in which to learn to deal with fear."  I think a similar focus should be taken when we talk about censorship.  How else are our children going to learn to deal with issues in the world unless we read and talk about them?

Cathy Puett Miller
Independent Literacy Consultant
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www.readingisforeveryone.org

From the UK it has been absolutely appalling to read on the subject of the censoring the reading of children according to narrow, and possibly minority, "Christian principles." I have been shaken to my core by the entire debate. We, in the UK, have not got so far down the fundamentalist road as yet, and hopefully we won't. I believe that a school in the UK would continue to use and suggest a really popular mainstream book like the Harry Potter books on the grounds that, whilst they may not be great literature, at least everyone (boys included) wants to read them. I believe a school would ride out a fundamentalist complaint and attempt at censorship such as the ones you describe, and appear to have to bow under. I hope it would be sympathetically managed but, I also hope and expect, such a situation would be dealt with on a firmly secular, strictly educational basis.

I am truly, deeply shocked to read, again (we often seem to), how dictatorial "Christianity" has become, and how powerful it is in the US. This was not the message I took from my reading of the book when I believed. It was rather a message of inclusive love and mutual respect. Of such strength in faith that generosity was possible and indeed demanded.

A faith which is likely to be shaken by a Harry Potter book is assuredly not a worthy faith and a faith which seeks to prevent others reading such a book is demonstrating petulant, vicious, narrow-minded weakness as well, of course, as absolutely fundamental error.

Jesus would certainly not approve (in my opinion, of course -  it's all a matter of opinion)! I do not recognise the censorships you have been coming up against as actions informed by genuinely Christian thinking. I think they should be formally challenged on two grounds. First, non-believers or different-believers have rights which it is utterly immoral (and un-Christian) to override, and second, it seems obvious from here that real believers in the US urgently need  to reclaim their faith from the bigots. As a non-Christian, in other words, I  would be deeply offended by the casual rinsing away of my fundamental rights and were I a Christian I would be even more incensed by the high handed and stiff-necked reducing of my faith to bitter, virulent, narrow, introverted, timid and backward-looking authoritarianism.

Hugo