Meg Cabot challenged in South Carolina.

From Maureen Johnson's blog:

Hey guys! Guess what! I come bearing BREAKING NEWS!

From the desk of Meg Cabot . . . who e-mailed this to me and told me I could tell you:

MEG CABOT HAS BEEN CHALLENGED!

Over at Meg Cabot's blog, she says that Princess Diaries 8 has officially been pulled from the middle school in question and may be pulled from the high school as well.  (She didn't say if it was pulled from the school library or from a classroom, and I couldn't find any articles about the situation.)

I haven't read it, but I'm not all that surprised.  All I remember about the last one I read (number #6, I think?) was Mia dithering about whether or not to have sex* with Michael.  As the movies were geared towards a younger audience, I can imagine someone picking it up and freaking out.  It's been challenged for "embracing immoral and non-traditional values", which could mean... well, anything really, right? 

*Just looked it up at Amazon, and it looks like she's still dithering, two books later (no wonder I lost interest, sheesh).   

Comments

[ReadingFool]

I expected problems when the movies came out. I made sure that everyone in our Children's Department knew that the books were not written for elementary school girls, unless their parents wanted to explain testicular cancer and children born out of wedlock. Several parents of girls that young were glad to have the heads-up. I hate it when movies misrepresent the books, and the movies do that in so many ways. (Much as I like Julie Andrews, she/her character is *not* Grandmere. ::shudder::) That being said, banning them from a middle school, let alone a high school, is ridiculous.

(I also stopped reading the series after book four. I recently read a review of the latest one and was shocked to discover that Mia and Michael broke up. Was it the dithering over the should we/shouldn't we?)

[Little Willow]

I had the opportunity to interview Meg Cabot this weekend. I asked her about the book banning, and I really liked her answer.
http://slayground.livejournal.com/324135.html

[Allie]

I think this is so neat and bad at the same time. Bad because there debating to take it off the shelves, neat because it's a new book to put up during banned book week. Stephen King, Mark Twain, Judy Blume, Harry Potter, and Where's Waldo is always the expected, but Princess Diaries! That's a headliner.

[Leila]

That's a fantastic interview, LW -- I loved the bit about the accidentally sent email, and you're right -- her answer about the book banning was super.

And (also from the interview), for those of us who were wondering, looks like PD10 will be the last one... at least for a while.

[Rebekah]

IF you think about it.
The fact that it's being challenged for "non traditional values" is EXTREMELY WORRYING.
Breaks from tradition often build progress.