Gay Penguin Tale Tops List of 'Challenged' Children's Books  | News | Advocate.com

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May 07, 2008
Gay Penguin Tale Tops List of 'Challenged' Children's Books

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 book is based on the true story of two penguins in New York's Central Park Zoo who became a couple and fostered a third chick named Tango.

''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 antireligious 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 average annual 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. (Hillel Italie, AP with additional reporting by The Advocate)

Reader Comments

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  • Name: The Rev. Thomas Squiers
    Date posted: 2008-05-09 9:56 AM
    Hometown: Fort Worth

    Comment:

    American society is very good at turning a blind eye to issues that are real and that are never going away. We are a selfish cultured society and since the majority of Americans are heterosexual, it fits the type to ban anything that does not appear common. So, it is not too surprising that even though homosexuality exists in the animal kingdom, it is much easier to proclaim a narrow viewpoint than to accept truth. We are a country of overachievers, overeaters, and plastic surgery. We point fingers without looking at our lives for error. That is the fabric that makes up modern America. So it is important that, in this mindset, to ban books that may teach and open a young person's mind up that not everything is black and white (pardon the pun) instead of our comfortable Stepford culture that has somehow, miserably seeped into the minds of this nation. May God bless Tango always!

  • Name: Craig
    Date posted: 2008-05-08 9:47 AM
    Hometown: Aurora, IL

    Comment:

    I've always wondered how the children of these kinds of parents fare in the real world. I am a parent to 2 well-rounded, wonderful women who grew up in an open environment where we would talk about all kinds of different situations that would make their mother uncomfortable. Typically, the discussion started with just talking about the facts (yes, there are gay people in the world, or what rape is, or that there are racists in the world), then we talked about what I wanted them to know about those things. It wasn't always comfortable, but it gave the girls a solid background, and a strong sense of right and wrong, which they thank me for. They were prepared to deal with people who thought differently from them, but were able to maintain their/our core values. I feel sorry for those children who are so sheltered that they are totally unprepared for a different opinion.

  • Name: Harry
    Date posted: 2008-05-07 9:10 PM
    Hometown: New York City

    Comment:

    I worked for 30 years in the book biz, and I never ceased to marvel at how many really excellent books get singled out for censorship. Apparently, the bluenoses are willing to overlook shelves and shelves of skanky soft-core porn so long as Mark Twain, Maya Angelou and the Wildlife Conservation Society are suppressed!

  • Name: Dumbasz Republiturd
    Date posted: 2008-05-07
    Hometown: Hicksville, TX

    Comment:

    Yes, we must BAN these books because we all know that by ignoring something like racism or violence or sex - they'll just stop happening and go away. It'd be like they never existed at all! We just have to deny, Deny DENY!

  • Name: Andrew
    Date posted: 2008-05-07
    Hometown: Los Angeles, CA

    Comment:

    A good friend of mine, who is an author (and who has had several books fall into the categories described here), said that while it may seem as though there is less book banning, the truth is that many libraries just don't order the book in the first place. It's the new form of censorship that doesn't get talked about much, but is alive and well in libraries around the country.

  • Name: Kelli
    Date posted: 2008-05-07
    Hometown: Dover, Delaware

    Comment:

    People need to get a grip. Literature of any kind is the spice of life and to deny someone reading material because of a books' content is insane. The same people that want these boks banned from their children's libraries are the same people that don't talk to, inform or teach their children anything. How else is the child suppossed to learn?

  • Name: Jim
    Date posted: 2008-05-07
    Hometown: Dubuque

    Comment:

    I bought this book & donated it to my school's library!

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