Comments | sternwieser: Banned books.

sternwieser

Banned books.

Nov 20, 2006 13:48

Bookbiters (and others), check this out.

Thoughts?

The most frequently challenged children's authors for 2005, by the way, were Judy Blume, Robie Harris, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, and Lois Lowry.

Comments 3

Did they read the WHOLE book??? kuzibah November 20 2006, 19:09:05 UTC

Yes, SOME Koreans are shown as doing bad things, but OTHER Koreans take in the narrator's brother and protect him as one of their own. That might be a topic for, oh, I don't know, CLASS DISCUSSION, perhaps?

*fumes*

Oh good grief. iidoru November 20 2006, 19:58:32 UTC

"Agnes Ahn, the other parent who spoke at the meeting, said her Korean-American son was made fun of at school because of the book and got the cold shoulder from a teacher because of the controversy over it. ... "What if your favorite teacher no longer says hi to you?" she asked the committee."

I would say that this is a problem with the teacher and not the book, wouldn't you?

"For me, the issue is about a child's self-image with respect to their ethnicity," Yoon said. "This book doesn't put that story in that context. It's confusing. . . . One ethnic minority is portrayed as . . . the bad guys."

Maybe they could bring this up during the discussion with the author? You know, children should never be reading in a vacuum anyway - parents and teachers should be DISCUSSING with them. Man.

finnmarie November 21 2006, 08:33:29 UTC

I have not read the book. But one of the most amazing books I read on 5th grade was "Ursula's War" (not sure if it's been translated into German), a book that described WWII from the point of view of a German girl who grew up with all that Naze propaganda, believed lots of it and was devastated when the war was lost. It was shocking. It was great.