February 10, 2005
Thought police in Bartow
From Florida Politics, we learn that the Christian thought police have way too much time on their hands.
Damn! This kind of petty crap really pisses me off.
A Polk County mother thinks the word damn has no place in a 10-year-old's school library book.Kristi Hardee hopes her quest to ban the book, “Anastasia Krupnik” by Newbery award-winner Lois Lowry, from Spook Hill Elementary in Lake Wales will lead to a policy allowing for a countywide ban on books deemed offensive.
"It's appalling, some of the things in this book," said Hardee, 32, mother of a fourth-grader and part-time church secretary.
Lowry said she's surprised someone is raising a fuss about the book now. It was written in the 1970s. She said she's all for parents restricting their children. "But they don't have the right to do it for other people."
Some Polk school officials agree. If a person objects to a book, they can file a complaint and the matter is taken up on a school-by-school basis with a media committee, said Jacqueline Rose, senior coordinator for library services. The school's committee will decide later this month.
Hardee has kept the book checked out so no one can get it.
Yeah, this book sounds downright immoral.
The first and best book in the very popular series describes the ups and downs of a precocious ten-year-old girl. Anastasia loves keeping lists of important information in her green notebook; when she discovers that her mother is pregnant, she instantly adds two new items to her "things I hate" list: "My parents" and "babies." But as the year passes, Anastasia finds that the items on her lists keep moving around; by the time her baby brother is born, the only thing left to hate is liver. An unusually warm, insightful and original portrait of childhood and family life, this is a special and memorable story. Horn Book called Anastasia "an amusing and engaging heroine" and The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books wrote, "the whole book is a delight."
New and used copies of this book are available at Amazon for $0.88 to $4.99. (Even better: buy from your local bookseller and tell them I sent you!) How ‘bout we send the school some extra copies so the kids don’t miss out...
Spook Hill Elementary
321 Dr J a Wltshre Ave E
Lake Wales, FL 33853
(863) 678-4262
Posted by Norwood at February 10, 2005 11:03 AM