Sadly, this type of thing continues. From a Middle School Lit Group, Sebastopol librarian Richie Partington was fired from his library consultant's position with the Bellevue Union School District in Santa Rosa California a day after refusing to meet with a principal who had banned Rodman Philbrick's The Last Book in the Universe from his school's library without having read it.
"I politely but firmly made it clear to the District Superintendent that until the principal actually read the book he had banned, I didn't see how we could have a conversation about the book. Partington had twice read the first chapter of the book aloud to sixth grade classes at the District's Kawana School the previous week and "had more than a dozen students begging to read it." When Partington arrived at the school on the following Monday morning with four copies of the book, he was informed by the school's library clerk (who also has never read the book) that she didn't want the book in the library because it has to do with gangs and that she'd gotten the principal to forbid its addition to the collection. Noting in an email to the Superintendent that "the bigger issue here is one of arbitrariness due to a lack of a District collection development policy and District reconsideration policy," Partington immediately drafted and emailed a proposal for a reconsideration policy to the Superintendent who responded the same day by mailing out the termination letter. The termination is effective immediately. -- What blows me away are people willing to ban books they haven't even read... Tena _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
