Thursday, March 18, 2004

Regardless of what you think about homosexuality and what age it is appropriate to teach children about less common forms of relationships, one thing is always wrong: stealing books from the library.

Evidently the Hartsell family never got that memo. When their daughter selected King & King from her school library, her parents were so upset they complained to the school and have refused to return the book until they "get assurances it won't be circulated." Fortunately, a generous Metafilter member has bought another copy of the offending book and had it sent to the Wilmington, NC school.

There are a lot of books in a school library that different families would find objectionable: The Egypt Game and other books about kids performing rituals of long-dead religions or witchcraft, of which there are a surprising number; Harry Potter; Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, which is about overthrowing God; any fairy tales, but especially the non-sanitized versions. Stealing books to prevent other children from reading them is never an appropriate way of expressing disagreement with the librarian's choices.
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