It can be done.
FRANKLIN — A list of "best books for young adults" chosen by the national Young Adult Library Services Association has been removed from Williamson County schools' web sites for being too "salacious" for students.
Every year the district puts together a recommended summer reading list, and this year Ravenwood High and Brentwood High schools' Web sites included links to the Library Services' list.
But at least one parent and school board member Terry Leve found some selections on the list, which includes titles like Debbie Harry Sings in French, in which the protagonist explores his interest in cross-dressing, and Living Dead Girl, in which a teen girl lives as an abductor's live-in rape victim, inappropriate for students.
"YALSA's list does not reflect the recommended reading list published by Williamson County Schools," Leve wrote to his constituents via e-mail. "To be perfectly blunt, many of the selections were extraordinarily salacious, sensual and sensationalistic." (Sound familiar?)
As a result, the district has removed the suggestion that the books on the list are recommended, though school officials say the list still can be an additional source for students and their families.
See the full YALSA list here.
1 comment:
This article fails to mention whether or not the schools in question even owned those books in the first place. It's so funny how this article presents the parent and school board member as taking some kind of moral stand against depravity, but it's not like there's some kind of law saying that they had to include a link to that booklist in the first place! They didn't do anything to their actual collection at all, so who really cares?
It's a link on their website, and they can choose to link to whatever they want. YALSA's is a good list, but it's certainly not the be-all, end-all of 'best books' lists. This is just such a strange article to me...
Post a Comment