Parents want Horry County School Board to ban book

[The Straight Story]

Everette Bibb was in for a big surprise last week when a fellow parent called to tell him the book Push could be found in their children's school library.

"If this book gets into my daughter's hands, I'll be furious," Bibb says.

His daughter, who is 14 and in 8th grade at Forestbrook Middle School, is one of hundreds of students he says was told about Push through an extracurricular reading list.

The book is a 1996 novel about Precious Jones, an illiterate 16-year-old, who grows up in poverty. Precious is raped by her father, battered by her mother, and dismissed by social workers as a Harlem impoverished youth. The story follows Precious, pregnant with a second child by her father, through her journey of learning how to read and be on her own. The novel was made into a critically acclaimed movie, Precious, in 2009, winning Academy Award and Sundance Film Festival praise.

It contains profane language on almost every page, including the n-word and f-word. There are also graphic depictions of rape and abuse scenes.

http://www.carolinalive.com/news/story.aspx?id=586857

Some don't want kids influenced by religion, others by certain words, violence (in print), etc.

Either reading something has an impact, or it does not - and if it does then what?

How would this book be seen by the parents if the main character because a christian/muslim/etc and most the book was of a religious bent (and how would those who support it being there feel if it was religious in overtones and published by the 700 club)?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

1. 14 yo is old enough to read that.

I'd sympathize with the parents if the kids were 10.

[blondeatlast]

6. Yup. My son is 14 and already reading some remarkable novels--

shockingly, he's rather normal as 14 year olds go, LOL!

[old mark]

2. K&R-Here is a link to information about the author....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapphire_(author)

FWIW, the book was made into an award winning movie in 2009.

It is called literature, and it has a lot of truth about daily life in the USA in it.
It might even make some people think....

mark

[Denninmi]

3. Kids need to be taught context and nuance.

If it is laced with profanity, that needs to be viewed through the prism of the culture the characters live in. IMO, it should be seen as an opportunity to have a discussion about profanity and the appropriate and inappropriate times to use it.

Keeping kids in the dark about this stuff just makes them at best unprepared, and at worst makes them desire what they perceive as "forbidden fruit."

Of course, I don't expect that logic to be understood by the religious right, who seem to think that merely telling kids something is "evil" and should be avoided will make it so.

[JoePhilly]

4. Dopes.

If you don't want your kid to read a certain book, tell them not to read it. But you can't make the school library remove it just for you.

[CTyankee]

5. I don't think I could read that book. I couldn't bring myself to see the movie.

I just knew it would haunt me later...

[WatsonT]

7. This is a very real concern.

If kids go off and read more than they are strictly required to (and actually enjoy it) who knows how it will affect them later in life.

They may chose to read for fun. They may even read a great variety of books in their free time leading to a wide general knowledge about life, history, the sciences, and philosophy.

The horror.