A case with interesting similarities and differences to that of West Bend is taking place in Leesburg, FL, where some citizens are now challenging 40-odd books in the Young Adult section of the Leesburg Public Library.
Two parents began a campaign against Maureen Johnson's The Bermudez Triangle and Cecily Ziegesar's Only in Your Dreams, a part of her Gossip Girls series. Their initial request was for a warning label on "explicit" books for teens, and for re-shelving. On 28 September, 2009, the city commission voted in a compromise. There will be no labels, but the Young Adult collection will be split along intended age-range lines, into Young Adult and High School (High School meaning older teens). It will be quite a lot of effort to do this.
The original book challengers are not satisfied with this compromise, as they want to separate books that "indecent" from books that are "decent" in any collection for sub-adults. They have stated they will continue the fight, although it is not presently clear what their next step will be, or even could be. After an apparent stalemate was reached in Leesburg, some of the challengers took their complaint to the County Commission of Lake County (the county containing Leesburg). Initial opinions of the commissioners were mixed, but the issue appears to have been shelved indefinitely. In a November 13th memo to the commission (available via open records request), the county attorney advised the commissioners that re-shelving challenged books (moving them out of the children's section) would likely amount to a violation of the First Amendment. The county attorney cited the Sund v. City of Wichita Falls case, among others. Background information:
An Open Letter to the Lake County Commissioners: [Click Here]. News Coverage:
Last updated 2 Jan 2010 The Challenged Books:The following is a list of the 43 challenged books, as listed in the Central Florida News 13 Story as of 30 Sep 2009 (see above). All the titles are linked to Barnes and Noble.com synopses.
Books are grouped by author. Those authors with multiple books challenged in Leesburg are listed first. The remaining challenged works -- one per author -- are listed by author's last name. You really can't judge a book by its cover, I guess. But looking over this list, I'd be embarrassed to be making a public stink about any of it.
|
