Anne Frank's, The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition Pulled from a School in Virginia
It appears that it only takes a brief mention, in this case of a body part (using the proper name) enough to get a book removed for students who will be in high school next year. Also, as you'll read, where was the committee (including the school librarian) to review the issue? According to the policy as described in the article, there should have been one.
A version of an iconic autobiography detailing a young Jewish girl's two-year experience hiding from Nazis in a cramped "Secret Annex" has been pulled from the shelves of Culpeper County Public Schools.
"The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition," a vivid memoir of Anne Frank's private thoughts during the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II, will no longer be assigned to CCPS students, according to Jim Allen, director of instruction for the school system.
This book is usually given to eighth-grade middle school English students to read.
Citing a parent's concern over the sexual nature of the vagina passage in the definitive edition, Allen said school officials immediately chose to pull this version and use an alternative copy.
"What we have asked is that this particular edition will not be taught," Allen said from his office Wednesday morning. "I don't want to make a big deal out of this. So we listened to the parent and we pulled it."
[Snip]
According to the school division's "public complaint about learning resources" policy, a review committee consisting of the school's principal, library media specialist, teacher, complainant, parent and/or student usually convene to discuss this type of issue.
[Snip]
Any pulled material, Allen said, is usually stored in the librarian's office.
According to Amazon.com, "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl," tops the list of commonly banned children's books in public schools nationwide [see below].
The reason listed for banning this book is "for being too depressing for students." Other books that made the Amazon list include "The Catcher in the Rye," ''Harry Potter," ''Of Mice and Men," and "Harriet the Spy," to name a few.
Note: The Amazon banned books list that was used in the mentioned above and in the stories linked below can be reviewed here. We know it was compiled by someone name Cheshire Cat and the compilation was last updated in 2007. No idea what criteria was used and how annotations are written. Yes, critical info and info literacy skills are so important in the age of the web.
Hasty decisions to restrict access to some books do "a disservice to students," said Angela Maycock, assistant director of the office for intellectual freedom at the American Library Association.
"Something that one individual finds controversial or offensive or objectionable may be really valuable to other learners in that community," she said.
The ALA has documented only six challenges to "The Diary of Anne Frank" since it began monitoring formal written complaints to remove or restrict books in 1990. Most of the concerns were about sexually explicit material, Maycock said. One record dating to 1983 from an Alabama textbook committee said the book was "a real downer" and called for its rejection from schools.
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