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Penguin Book Tops Most Challenged List
by The Associated Press
Posted: May 6, 2008 - 5:00 pm ET
(New York City) A children's
story about a family of penguins with two fathers once again
tops the list of library books the public objects to the most.
"And Tango Makes
Three," released in 2005 and co-written by Justin
Richardson and Peter Parnell, was the most
"challenged" book in public schools and libraries
for the second straight year, according to the American
Library Association.
"The complaints are that
young children will believe that homosexuality is a lifestyle
that is acceptable. The people complaining, of course, don't
agree with that," Judith Krug, director of the ALA's
Office for Intellectual Freedom, told The Associated Press on
Tuesday.
The ALA defines a
"challenge" as a "formal, written complaint
filed with a library or school requesting that materials be
removed because of content or appropriateness."
Other books on the ALA's top 10
list include Maya Angelou's memoir "I Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings," in which the author writes of being raped as
a young girl; Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn," long attacked for alleged racism; and Philip
Pullman's "The Golden Compass," an anti-religious
work in which a former nun says: "The Christian religion
is a very powerful and convincing mistake."
Pullman's novel, released in
1996, received new attention last year because of the film
version starring Nicole Kidman.
Overall, the number of reported
library challenges dropped from 546 in 2006 to 420 last year,
well below the mid-1990s, when complaints topped 750. For
every challenge listed, about four to five go unreported, the
library association estimates.
"The atmosphere is a
little better than it used to be," Krug says. "I
think some of the pressure has been taken off of books by the
Internet, because so much is happening on the Internet."
According to the ALA, at least
65 challenges last year led to a book being pulled.
In Louisville, Ky., a high
school principal told 150 English students to drop
"Beloved," Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning
novel about an ex-slave who has murdered her baby daughter. At
least two parents had complained that "Beloved"
includes depictions of violence, racism and sex.
In Burlingame, Calif., Mark
Mathabane's "Kaffir Boy," a memoir about growing up
poor and black in apartheid-era South Africa, was banned from
an intermediate school after a parent complained about a
two-paragraph scene in which men pay boys for sex.
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