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Sandpiper Wades through Alabama ChallengeThe Tuscaloosa (Ala.) County School Board grudgingly decided to keep Sandpiper by Ellen Wittlinger on the shelves at the Brookwood High School library December 10. The book was challenged in September due to a complaint that it has sexual content and language. “Let it be clear,” board President Brett Whitehead read from a prepared statement at the meeting, “this board does not approve of the graphic language used by the author in this book. We strongly feel the author could have chosen more appropriate language to establish the underlying theme of a book that seems obviously directed at young teenage schoolchildren.” He went on to explain that the board decided to retain the book on the advice of legal counsel, who cited U.S. Supreme Court rulings that removing a book from a school library because of its content threatens students’ First Amendment rights. “It disappoints us that the decisions of the courts have taken away this local Board of Education’s ability to make decisions that protect these very same schoolchildren,” Whitehead added.
”We are proud that the board upheld the First Amendment,” Tuscaloosa County School System Library Media Specialist Jane Smith told American Libraries. She noted that the library had received tremendous support for keeping the book, and that only two of the many letters to the editor published in the Tuscaloosa News were against retaining it. However, the board does plan to review its selection policy, Whitehead’s statement ended by saying, to “determine how we as a school system can better screen and prevent those books and materials which contain vulgar, offensive, and inappropriate language and subject matter from reaching the shelves of our school libraries.” Posted December 14, 2007. |
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