Kids' Right to Read Project Challenges
Learn more about KRRP's work below. To report a challenge, email KRRP Coordinator Mayukh Sen at mayukh@ncac.org.
#Summer Reading Challenges Spark KRRP Defense in PA and CT
The Kids' Right to Read Project tackled two separate -- but similar -- challenges to books featured on summer reading lists: Sidescrollers, a graphic novel by Matt Loux, was removed in Enfield, CT; in Emmaus, PA, a board member has motioned to remove Prep and Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test from the list.
No official parental complaint was filed in either case.For more information and to read the letter sent on behalf of KRRP and partner orgs regarding Sidescrollers, click here. For Prep and Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test in the East Penn School District, click here.
#Challenged Social Studies Textbook To Remain in MD Schools
KRRP was thrilled to hear that the Frederick County Board of Education decided to retain the textbook Social Studies Alive! Our Community and Beyond, which had come under challenge after parents objected to "left-leaning" or "socialist" statements in the text.
A single parent rallied others to object to the ways topics such as environmentalism, community involvement, volunteering and health care were discussed in the book. A reconsideration committee composed of teachers, administrators and other education professionals met to reevaluate the book after the complaint was lodged and recommended keeping the book until it was up for review in 2014. Read the committee's report here. Schools superintendent Teresa Alban agreed with the committee's findings, rejecting only their suggestion that the search for a new textbook begin immediately, citing concerns over budget and potential future adoption of online resources in the place of a text.
The complainants were not satisfied with the superintendent's decision and appealed to the BOE to have the book removed immediately. To read the complaints click here.
On the occasion of the hearing, the Kids' Right to Read Project issued a letter urging the Board keep the book unless objections were pedagogically sound.
#Book About Non-Traditional Family Restricted in Utah
Restricted access is still censorship, the Kids’ Right to Read Project declared in its call for the return of Patricia Polacco’s In Our Mothers’ House to school library stacks in Davis County, UT.
In a letter sent (click for .pdf) to the Superintendent of schools, the Kids’ Right to Read Project criticized the County’s recent moves to restrict access to the book, allowing it to be checked out of the school library only with a signed permission slip.
The letter negates school district claims that the book might violate a state law against "advocating homosexuality,” saying that constitutional demands must prevail over state law.
The letter goes on to say that "parents who object to the book could easily supervise their children’s reading choices,” but restricting access of others "diminishes the education value of the library whose primary role is to allow students to make choices according to their own interests, experiences, and family values.”
#KRRP Opposes Family Book Ban in I.L.
Following the ban of Todd Parr’s The Family Book (Little, Brown and Company) in Erie, Illinois, seven organizations have joined with the Kids’ Right to Read Project to oppose the decision. The Kids Right to Read Project is a joint effort of the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) and American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE), In a letter sent to the Erie School Board, ABFFE and other free expression defenders criticized the district’s decision to ban the book and other materials endorsed by the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN). In doing so, the letter says, it acquiesced to religiously-motivated complaints by some parents at the expense of the rest of the community.
The letter (read here) warned of the potential first amendment implications of the decision and called for a return of the materials. It goes on to point out that the decision to remove The Family Book flatly rejected a professional assessment by the school’s reconsideration committee, which recommended they keep it.
"It is the school’s responsibility to provide a safe, non-discriminatory school environment, and to ensure that the anti-gay beliefs of some parents do not operate to the disadvantage any students, no matter what their beliefs or sexual orientation,” the letter said.
The book discusses all types of families—those with single parents, adopted children, step-families and interracial families. The objectors complained about a page that states, factually, "some families have two moms or two dads.”
In addition to NCAC and ABFFE, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, Association of American Publishers, Anti-Defamation League, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Independent Book Publishers Association and National Council of Teachers of English also signed the letter. The publisher of The Family Book, Little, Brown and Company, also joined their support to the letter.
#Looking For Alaska Pulled from Sumner County Schools
John Green’s award-winning young adult novel Looking for Alaska once more became the target of censorship when it was recently banned from classrooms in Sumner County, Tennessee. The Kids’ Right to Read Project, a joint project of the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE), is opposing the book’s removal.In a letter sent to the Sumner County Director of Schools Del Phillips, the organizations expressed their alarm about the sudden and immediate removal of the book without following the procedures in the county’s own School Board policies.
"It is particularly disturbing that the complaint of one parent triggered a county-wide ban within the span of a single week, without following established procedure and without so much as a review of the literary and educational merits of the book,” the letter states, going on to note that, by removing the book, "the district has imposed one viewpoint on the entire student body, without regard to the educational consequences for students.”
The letter urged the school to honor its constitutional obligations and allow students the opportunity to read and discuss the book, which was awarded the American Library Association’s prestigious Michael L. Printz Award for "the best book written for teens, based entirely on its literary merit.”
In 2008, Looking for Alaska was removed from schools in Depew, NY after similar objections were raised, despite the fact that students already needed parental permission to read it. At that time, Green defended himself from claims that the book was "pornographic" in a YouTube video (below).
#KRRP Opposes Bans On Dirty Cowboy
Everybody bathes, a fact made light of by Amy Timberlake’s whimsical, award-winning children’s book The Dirty Cowboy. There will be no bathing cowboys for elementary schools students in Annville-Cleona, P.A., however, as the district removed the book following a complaint about depictions of the cowboy’s partial nudity.
The Kids’ Right to Read Project is opposing the book’s removal and asking that the book be returned to school library shelves.The organizations made their concerns known in a letter sent to the Annville-Cleona School Board
"The decision to remove the book not only accedes to a specific viewpoint about the acceptability of nudity, but also deprives the entire student body of access to a highly praised book that many students, and their parents, would wish to read,” the letter states. "Those who object to this book are entitled to their view, but they may not impose it on others.”
The letter pointed out that a vast number of legitimate and educational materials might be ruled out on the grounds of nudity, including books about Native Americans or other indigenous cultures, those depicting Adam and Eve or Christ on the Cross, and art history books containing images from the Sistine Chapel.
#KRRP Protests Tucson Book Banning
On January 30, the Kids' Right to Read Project (KRRP), which is co-sponsored by ABFFE and the National Coalition Against Censorship, issued a statement condemning the removal of books used for the Mexican-American Studies program in Tucson Unified School District. School authorities have removed at least seven books that they consider to be prejudiced against whites. The statement was signed by dozens of national groups representing teachers, booksellers, librarians, publishers, and writers. Three Arizona bookstores--Antigone Books in Tucson, Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe and Atalanta Music and Books in Bisbee--and the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association also signed the statement.
"This is censorship at its most brazen," said NCAC Executive Director Joan Bertin. "Officials at the state and local level are responsible for this unacceptable restriction on the educational opportunities of students and their ability to have discussion in school about historical and contemporary events touching on race and ethnicity. We call on them to restore the books and topics for discussion in the district's classrooms."
 School officials acknowledge removing books including Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire, Message to Aztlan by Rodolfo Corky Gonzales, and Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years by Bill Bigelow. The TUSD board ordered the books removed after State Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal threatened to withhold state funding pursuant to a recently-enacted Arizona law that prohibits any class or program that promotes "resentment toward a race or class of people." Huppenthal, who sponsored the law when he was a state legislator, claims that the books used in the Mexican-American Studies Program "repeatedly reference white people as being 'oppressors,'" and therefore violate the law. That law is being challenged in court.
"We do not think the students of Tucson should have to wait for a federal court order to get the education they deserve," said ABFFE President Chris Finan. "Regardless of the outcome of legal proceedings, this is harming students, whose education should be the primary concern of elected officials. Instead, they are putting politics and ideology ahead of the well-being of young people."
Watch TUSD students protest the book ban at a school board meeting
Join TUSD teacher Norma Gonzales' fight against the book ban by signing a petition at Change.org
Watch an interview with University of Arizona MAS Professor Rodolfo Acuña, author of the banned book Occupied America
Help smuggle banned books back into Arizona!
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