More on the Monroe Township challenge.

Check it out!

Here are the reading lists. I think. The school district pulled the links, but Google is our friend.

Middle School*

Grade 9
Grade 9 CP
Grade 9 Honors

Grade 10
Grade 10 CP
Grade 10 Honors*

Grade 11
Grade 11 CP
Grade 11 Honors

Grade 12
Grade 12 CP
Grade 12 Honors*
Grade 12 AP

The lists I've starred are the ones that have been mentioned in coverage of the challenge.

As you can see, neither Tweak nor Norwegian Wood appear on the middle school list, so we can put that claim right to bed. It does, however, include Ironman on the sixth grade list, which I'm sure will go over REALLY WELL with the folks who challenged the other two. On the other hand, there's no gay sex, so maybe they'd be okay with all of the profanity? I dunno.

Norwegian Wood, is, indeed, required reading for the 10th Grade Honors students. Or... was, I should say. Catch-22 is, too. Nothing remotely disturbing in that one, nosiree.

It's also listed as an option on the 10th Grade College Prep list. Kite Runner is on the regular list, but the (male/male) rape scene hasn't raised any hackles. Oh, look! Looking for Alaska, complete with the most cringe-inducing (female/male) oral sex scene EVER, is there, too. (I'm saying, obviously, that if you don't worry about that little thing called CONTEXT, you can find something problematic in any book.)

Tweak is an option on both the 12th Grade College Prep list and the Honors list. It's an option, people. No one has to read it if they don't want to. So, in that case, I don't see the issue. If it makes any almost-old-enough-to-enlist-and-also-about-to-head-off-to-college-that-oh-so-sheltered-and-innocent-place students uncomfortable, they totes could have picked another book off of the list. Like... The Once and Future King. Or Siddhartha. As for relevance, it's interesting that people are only looking at the sex angle, when, HELLO!

I'm not saying that the lists aren't strange. They are. At the very least, there's a very broad range of reading levels. (Shabanu for 10th graders? Really?) And there are certainly plenty of other books that would have been less problematic. But pulling books like that, without any sort of formal review, is never a good idea. Because, as I pointed out above, anybody can take issue with anything.

More than anything else, though, I've been COMPLETELY offended by the coverage. It's mostly been about the OH NOES, GAY SEX, rather than about the actual story or issue. I mean, the Christian Science Monitor equates Murakami with Jersey Shore with XXX films? Seriously? I'm surprised. They're usually above crap like that.

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Previously.

Comments

[Tammy]

What I want is for the people who made the lists to step forward and say, "This is why we chose this book." When my daughter comes home with a reading list I assume that the books have been vetted through the educators and the librarians. That the educators have deemed the books appropriate for the grade level and have some value. I agree that you can put a book on the list and, as long as it's not required, a parent has the right to decide for themselves if their child should read it. The problem is it's not a television program, movie, or music. The books don't have ratings attached. We don't know if it's appropriate unless we read it ourselves. I want to rely on the educator, not just to suggest the book, but to stand by it.

[Leila]

One of the good things about adhering to a formal book challenge policy is that it allows for the person/people who picked the book to lay that information out.

Some schools, though, after situations like this, have changed their booklists so that the reasoning is written out ahead of time, right there with the book description, in an attempt to nip stuff like this in the bud. That's always seemed like a good compromise to me.

And it's always a good idea to have alternate options for required reading. That way, if a parent (or student) is uncomfortable with a specific book, there's already a process in place for dealing with that. That just seems to be the best way to go, since everyone has a different take on what is (or isn't) 'appropriate'.

Ratings-wise, I don't like 'em: Movie ratings are problematic, even (there's a documentary called This Film Has Not Yet Been Rated that talks about that), and I think that with books, they'd be even more so. For instance, the LESBIAN! SEX! SCENE! that keeps coming up is, what, a paragraph long? In a book that clocks in at almost 300 pages? And yet the whole book is being (or a hypothetical rating would be) judged on the basis of those few lines? I dunno. That just doesn't work for me.

Well. I do go on, don't I? I apologize in advance for any typos!

[Gillian]

I just like that The Day They Came to Arrest the Book is on the sixth grade list.