Challenge news.

• One of the parents who is objecting to the use of Part-Time Indian in the ninth-grade curriculum has suggested placing warning labels on books.  Whenever people bring this idea up, I wonder how far they've thought it through.  Would Romeo & Juliet and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Graceling and Boy Toy and the entire erotica genre all get the DANGER: SEX sticker?  Would The Scarlet Letter and The World According to Garp get ADULTERY stickers?  Would Lord of the Flies and Hamlet and American Psycho and The Hunger Games get slapped with one that reads VIOLENCE INSIDE?  For that matter, would American Psycho get the SEX sticker, too?  Jeepers.  Some books would be so plastered with stickers that we wouldn't be able to see the cover art anymore.  Who would decide how much 'offensive' content was enough to warrant a label?  ETC.  [Moments later:  Actually, I may have to reconsider my previous opinion.  Because a CAUTION: DOG DEATH sticker would come in way handy in some cases.  Or maybe something a little more broad, like DANGER: MAY CAUSE UNCONTROLLABLE SOBBING.]
• In response to the ongoing Gossip Girl controversy, a Florida newspaper editorial has also brought up the idea of book ratings.  See above.
• And four short stories (by David Sedaris, Laura Lippman, Stephen King and Ernest Hemingway) have been pulled from the curriculum of an elective course in a New Hampshire high school.

Comments

[Elizabeth]

A couple of weeks ago, I found a book in the Harrods Middle Grade/Teen section labeled "Not Suitable For Younger Readers" with a big purple sticker. That gave me a serious "Huh?" moment. (And then I bought the book.)

I would have said I am anti-book label, but you've got me with that Sherman Alexie example. A heads-up would have been nice before I attempted to read in PUBLIC. At a DOG WASH!!

[SamR]

Caution: Dog Death stickers ... I'm writing my congressman for this to be made a constitutional amendment. A law just wouldn't be strong enough.

But really, why should movies, TV shows and video games get stickers/labels/ratings and not books? Surely, it's not because the things portrayed on TV sets are "more real" than what happens in a book?!?!?!?

[Kirstin]

Content stickers are useful for audience information. I am the kind of audience member who thinks Sherman's "boner" clip is outrageously good (and useful for connecting students to the writer), but I can see why others would want to be informed about the content.

Or the sticker on Alexie's book could read CAUTION: AFTERMATH OF AMERIAN INDIAN OPPRESSION EXPLORED HERE, SO WATCH OUT.

[Kirstin]

PS (sorry): The high school students in NH probably don't understand "Hills Like White Elephants" in the first place, so why even use it when the "objectionable content" is so veiled?

[Rachel]

I definetly agree with you "bookshelves of doom"... where do you start and end when you start to classify child readability level with a sticker. So many books we consider classics would automatically be considered too racy for a high school student to read if this were the case. I hope we are not starting a virtual book burning.

[Arlene Allen]

Um.... one of the concerned parents made a comment about not hearing language like that in the hallways of high school filled with freshmen. Yeah, right. Is she still living in 1955? I have a high school freshman in my house. I KNOW how she talks in school. Give me a break. Not only do I find it offensive as a librarian, the thought of labeling books, I find it offensive as a parent. Oh, I can't even get started!

[Sarah Lennox]

I think this is a great idea. Had a book been labeled violent and sexual in high school it would have never made it back to the stacks. Its a perfect way to get kids to read good books. As for the parents in this town, have they read the "classics" on that required reading? I just go a degree in English Literature and Hester Pryne and Margaret Gardner are precisely who I want my little siblings to see as upstanding characters to follow. At least Alexie is relatable to the students of today!

[Kyri]

I want labels saying, "WARNING: BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO SMALL FURRY ANIMALS IN THIS BOOK." That would save me a lot of personal trauma.

Also, "WARNING: APPARENTLY INNOCUOUS BOOK THAT IS ACTUALLY A FRONT FOR EXTREME RIGHT-WING PROPAGANDA." This has happened to me twice lately, once with a psychology book that I had actually bought for our library, once with a historical fiction novel in which the 5th century Roman-British characters suddenly started preaching about the evils of government interference in business.

(j/k about the labels, mostly.)