Book challenge round-up.

• The parent of a 14-year-old middle school student in South Carolina has complained that Ender's Game is pornographic. The parent contacted the police about the matter, and the teacher who read the book aloud to a class has been placed on administrative leave. I can only assume that the complainant is equating nudity with pornography? ETA: Apparently, Ender's Game is just one of three books (the second is Agatha Christie's Curtain, which... is a weird choice for the classroom, but whatever; the third is The Devil's Paintbox, which I haven't read) that the parent took issue with—but it sounds like Ender's Game is the only one to be labelled pornographic.
• Tango faces challenge in a Minnesota elementary school library. The book was challenged last fall, the reconsideration committee found in favor of the book, but then that decision was overturned by two school board members and the local Superintendent. According to one of those two school board members, the decision had nothing to do with Tango having two dads. To which I say: baloney.
• A group of parents wants Jeanette Walls' The Glass Castle removed from the 10th grade curriculum in Pennsylvania's Shade-Central City High School District.
• A byproduct of the Arizona law that shut down Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American-studies curriculum: Librostraficantes, or Book Smugglers.

Comments

[Hope]

I followed the link on the South Carolina story. There's something going on there, but I am not sure what. Several people in the comments in this story and a story in another local paper have said that the parent complained that the teacher was reading aloud from an e-reader and that the text was NOT from any of the books mentioned in the article.

I don't want to give a random comment too much credence (especially as the commenter appears to be an idiot), but the newspaper article mentions complaints about a scene with a prostitute, which I certainly don't remember from Ender's Game. Maybe it's in Devil's Paintbox?

Do you remember anything about prostitutes in Ender's Game? Is this like the story you linked to a couple of months ago where someone was complaining about the blow job in The Absolutely True Diary and I was going, wait, wait, what blow job? I don't know how I miss all this stuff in the books I read. Maybe I am just not reading closely enough . . .

[Jenn]

According to the School Library Journal review, The Devil's Paintbox includes a brief encounter with a prostitute. Maybe that's what this parent was so up in arms about, but mistakenly attributed it to Ender's Game. It's been a while since I've read the latter, but I certainly don't remember anything pornographic about it.