[CALIBK12] A book challenge or not

[creardon21 at comcast.net]

Calibers,

I thought you might appreciate something I experienced recently in the library.

A student came up rather briskly to the circulation counter and stomped her foot, stood up straight, tossed her long curly hair over her shoulder and said, "I want to know if you have the book, The Golden Compass in the library and are you going to take it off the shelf?"  O.K. So here I had a big, I hope, internal sigh.

I said, "Yes as a matter of fact we do have the book and why do you think we would take it off the shelf?"  My student replied, "Well at my sister's school they took it off the shelf and I think that that's just wrong!  I read the book and I loved it."  

I explained that we have a process in place for challenging books and that I wouldn't be taking the book off the shelf unless the book was challenged and went through the lengthy process.

But the story sadly doesn't end there.  I have had several inquiries this week about challenging various books.  It seems too coincidental.  I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced a sudden increase in "censorship"?   I'm emailing from my home email account and will not be able to respond to emails until after school hours.  

Christine Reardon
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.sjsu.edu/pipermail/calibk12/attachments/20080201/42caa1fb/attachment.html