7 deadly books? Talk of ban hits burbs

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-bookban22.html

A northwest suburban high school board member seeks to ban seven books from classroom use because she thinks the profanity, depiction of graphic sex, and drug and abortion references in the literature are inappropriate for teenagers.

Leslie Pinney admits she only read passages of the controversial selections, including Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Toni Morrison's Beloved, which were on the American Library Association's 100 most challenged books list between 1990 and 2000.

But Pinney said perusing the questionable parts of the books made it clear they weren't suitable for children and should be taken off Township High School District 214's proposed required reading list next year. The district is based in Arlington Heights.

Pinney was particularly offended by the explicit tales of masturbation and teen sex in Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The popular novel, often described as a modern-day Catcher in the Rye, was among the ALA's top 10 most challenged books two years ago.

[liberal N proud]

1. When do the book burnings begin?

We would hate for our children to read anything that isn't approved by the neocons.
:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

[rpannier]

3. As soon as ann 'the shrill voice of treason'

can find someone to poison AJ John P. Stevens and we can have 5 lunatics on the Supreme Court

[Tesha]

9. They never ended. Check any library or school near you. (NT)

[XboxWarrior]

27. WHY?

because he said so.......:eyes:

[YOY]

2. What teens should read according to Pinney

Although some skeptics say the canine tongue-on-ass inferences may be shocking enough to cause catatonics and moral decay in some students!

[izzie]

4. My mother is in spin in her grave.

Her many book shelfs were open to us and she read a lot. Course in my days everyone had to hunt for those 'fr. novels' and true crime were in the police papers hardly the ones that came into your kitchen.The only one she ever hid was a magazine on the death camps that were filled with drawing on what they were doing and this was during WW2 and I found the thing. I had night mares and I know it was around during WW2 as my mother died at the end of the war. It is not as if these kids can not find these same books every place else and now will be sure to read them.

[elehhhhna]

5. "Pinney admits she only read passages of the controversial selections"

She sounds well informed and has obviously researched this matter carefully NOT.

[Conan_The_Barbarian]

7. That's what I find most entertaining about this

These kinds of people amuse me.

[elehhhhna]

25. I swear you'll find that line in every article about bookburning Moms.

[maine_raptor]

6. Here we go again (insertrollingeyessmiliehere)

"......she thinks the profanity, depiction of graphic sex, and drug and abortion references in the literature are inappropriate for teenagers."

Oh, like teenagers should go forth into the world without knowing about the dangers out. Jeesh!!!!!!!

Well I happen to think they should be exposed to that stuff, if for no other reason than to make sure they have their eyes wide open when they are kicked out of the nest. Hell, I'd make that Vonnegut book required reading (with a test on Friday) if I was in her position.

[atommom]

8. Similar drama playing out in my area,

spearheaded by a similar woman who had finally allowed her teen to go to public school rather than being homeschooled. She also only read the "objectionable" parts, and then whipped some of the other parents into a frenzy over them. Have the neocons planted clone moms everywhere? :crazy:

[TallahasseeGrannie]

10. The more things change

the more they remain the same. I have been dealing with book bannings since 1972, the year I started teaching.

T-Grannie

[alcibiades_mystery]

11. Happy to say that I've read all of those

I can see her getting miffed at Wallflower, maybe, but The Things They Carried? The Botany of Desire? I mean, are you fucking kidding me? (By the way, Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire is outstanding; it's not even fiction: it ends with a chapter on Pollan growing genetically modified potatoes that he "leased" from Monsanto, fer chrissakes). Of course, maybe The Things They Carried would put a damper on recruitment efforts at Township High School, but really now. Ms. Pinney is a real certifiable nutjob. The only good thing that will come out of this is that each of these books (they're all great) will be even more desirable to the students as a result.

[GoldenOldie]

13. "....inappropriate for teenagers."

How far does her concern for teenagers go? I thought 18-19 year olds were/are considered teenagers yet they are dying and being maimed in Iraq/Afghanistan on a daily basis. This dirty, filthy, bloody war and the sights and actions these young men and women (teenagers) endure should be of a deeper concern than words in a book. Books and words don't kill or die.

[teenagebambam]

12. Why is she worried?

The kids are so busy studying for their No Child Left Behind standardized tests they don't have the time or desire to read anyway.

[genie_weenie]

14. Slaughterhouse-Five? If we ever needed Vonnegut's

work it's now as we are in The Throes (hmmm, god name for a rock group). And The Things They Carried is amoving work on War's destruction of young men's bodies and souls. I had a copy out in Iraq.

But, then Public Education is all about making good little drones for the Federal Government, not Anti-War thinkers...

[msongs]

15. ban bibles first - rape, incest, genocide, witch craft, sorcery etc nt

[WinkyDink]

16. As an actual h.s. English teacher (ret.), my 2 cents:

There is absolutely no need to REQUIRE sexually-explicit novels.

For one thing, the "teens know it and do it" argument is specious; they vomit and defecate, too, but I don't see a Liberal cry for books graphically describing these functions.

Secondly, there is a wealth of Classic literature that goes unread the way it is, especially when a less stellar "modern" (or post-modern) novel is chosen; there is only so much time in a school year.

Thirdly, "The Perks of Being a Wallflower"? I don't even have to go beyond the title to conclude that this is one of those "we must appeal to teen-agers' REAL lives if we are to get them to read the GOOD stuff later" curriculum choices. But wait; I'll just quote a review: "From Publishers Weekly---
A trite coming-of-age novel that could easily appeal to a YA readership, filmmaker Chbosky's debut broadcasts its intentions with the publisher's announcement that ads will run on MTV."

So, whatever. I had no problem discussing sexual connotations (or denotations), phallic symbols, etc. But my basic view is that the public classroom is like network TV; leave the cable stuff for the individual's PRIVATE CHOICE.

P.S. I started during the VietNam Conflict. I took care to teach "Dulce et Decorum Est", "War is Kind", "The Man He Killed", and similar. What has anti-war got to do with the O.P.?

P.P.S. The Old/Hebrew Testament's less savory tales are not public-school fodder, either. But to denigrate them while praising "Wallflower" seems illogical to me.

[knitter4democracy]

18. I agree.

I only taught for three years (two of AP due to staffing problems), and everything you wrote is right on. Why not teach Shakespeare? Okay, I agree with Morrison being on the reading list, but she should be taught in class, not for summer reading (happened to me at my second job and was a huge controversy I was on the sidelines for, as I was hired after the summer reading was picked and assigned).

I'm not a big fan of YA. Kids can handle the harder stuff with the right supportive environment. I've seen it happen on all levels of ability. Let's teach the really good stuff, like Shakespeare and Pushkin, Orwell and Pope, and Woolf and Austin. (Yes, I mostly taught Brit Lit with one year of world lit--sorry for the limited list). Heck, I even covered a few verses of the Koran in a Catholic school in my world lit class with a lot of help from a Muslim student (she wrote everything in Arabic on the board and recited it for us, and then she answered questions on the Five Pillars of Faith, etc.).

Why are those parents so scared of controversy?

[alcibiades_mystery]

20. Both "The Things They Carried" and "Slaughterhouse Five"

are "war novels" to some extent, and maybe even "anti-war novels," so I would guess it comes from there.


"The Botany of Desire" is a non-fiction book about the relationship between humans and plants (agricultural, cultural, economic, iconographic, riual, etc.).

None of these novels are Kathy Acker, or the sado-masochistic shit-eating scene from Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, perhaps with the exception of Wallflower, which does have some racy bits. To beat up on Beloved for supposedly outrageous content seems ridiculous to me. Yes, there's rape, and child-killing, and it is implied that the boys on Sweet Home take to fucking a cow, but all of this works with the story, and is therefore not gratuitous.

The notion that literature has gotten more graphic is ludicrous. Let's not forget the anal kissing and red hot poker up the ass in Chaucer's Miller's Tale (the miller being a drunk who likes to smash down doors with his head, mind you), the unceasing licentiousness in Shakespeare, etc., etc. Hell, forget Pynchon. Leopold Bloom's fantasies in Ulysses include a dominatrix who orders him to lap up urine like champagne, and ends with Molly Bloom masturbating herself to orgasm (yes, yes, I said yes, yes yes...) - another banned book, that. Took a fucking court to get that one sold in the US. Even the stodgiest of Victorian literature is rife with sex and scandal: hell, the whole Victorian machine seems to run on these. That much of it is coded is no excuse; it's pretty thinly coded at the end of the day.

[Jim__]

23. What do you see in "Freakonomics" that you would consider objectionable?

I haven't read all the books on that list and so can't form an opinion as to whether or not some of them should not be on a required reading list. But "Freakonomics"? "Slaughterhouse 5"? What is objectionable here? The fact that she includes these books on her list makes me suspicious of her entire list.

[alcibiades_mystery]

24. Freakonomics would be considered subversive

That's about the only thing I could imagine would bother her.

[Warpy]

17. Sex phobic 40 somethings projecting their hangups onto

sex obsessed teenagers and thinking they can turn their kids back into sexless children if only they can ban books with certain words in them. Oh my. One of the favors my mother did me was never limit my reading material. She knew from personal experience that any book she tried to ban from the house would end up under my mattress, just as it had hers when she was growing up.

If Mrs. Pinney doesn't like these books, then by all means she should stop reading them in order to be offended by them.

If she hasn't managed to give her kids ethical/moral guidelines by the time they're fifteen, the game's over and no amount of pursed lipped, blue nosed tut-tutting over racy books in the school library is going to help.

Literature isn't sexless and santized any more than the real world is.

[Tansy_Gold]

19. Times sure have changed. . . . .sort of

I graduated from the old Arlington High School in District 214 a few (ahem!) years ago. Back then, we read anything we wanted, and teachers gladly recommended more.

But those were the proverbial good ol' days. AHS was closed in the mid-80s and sold to a Xtian education group that runs it as Liberty Christian Academy. (Zoning prevents the property from being used as anything other than a school.) My understanding is that they have let the building fall into sad disrepair.

Maybe I'll go back for that reunion in September. . . . .




Tansy Gold

[xchrom]

21. this woman operates under the philosophy that she must

worry about other peoples genitals 24/7.

you cannot separate sex from literature -- anymore than separate a metaphor from literature.

the idea that sexuality is transmitted to teens through literature is ridiculous on the face of it.

and i'm sorry i'm a christian and i find it VERY apt to talk about the naughty bits in the bible in this context and to be extremely harsh and cynical.

[Jim__]

22. Freakonomics?

What is objectionable in that book? Citing real world data?

It's been a while since I read Slaughterhouse 5, but, I can't remember what is objectionable in it. When the POWs are on the train and there's no place to defecate? Should we protect adolescents from the reality of war? Is it preferable to just teach them that war is glorious?

[theHandpuppet]

26. I'm confused...

"A northwest suburban high school board member seeks to ban seven books from classroom use because she thinks the profanity, depiction of graphic sex, and drug and abortion references in the literature are inappropriate for teenagers."

Add some infanticide, genocide, incest, rape and torture and I could swear someone was objecting to the Bible.