A children's
story about a family of penguins with two fathers once again
tops the list of library books the public objects to the
most.
And Tango Makes Three, released in 2005 and
co-written by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, was the
most ''challenged'' book in public schools and
libraries for the second straight year, according to
the American Library Association. The book is based on
the true story of two penguins in New York's Central Park
Zoo who became a couple and fostered a third chick
named Tango.
''The complaints
are that young children will believe that homosexuality
is a lifestyle that is acceptable. The people complaining,
of course, don't agree with that,'' Judith Krug,
director of the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom,
told the Associated Press on Tuesday.
The ALA defines a
''challenge'' as a ''formal, written complaint filed
with a library or school requesting that materials be
removed because of content or appropriateness.''
Other books on
the ALA's top 10 list include Maya Angelou's memoir I
Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, in which the
author writes of being raped as a young girl; Mark Twain's
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, long
attacked for alleged racism; and Philip Pullman's The
Golden Compass, an antireligious work in which
a former nun says, ''The Christian religion is a very
powerful and convincing mistake.''
Pullman's novel,
released in 1996, received new attention last year
because of the film version starring Nicole Kidman.
Overall, the
number of reported library challenges dropped from 546 in
2006 to 420 last year, well below the mid 1990s, when
average annual complaints topped 750. For every
challenge listed, about four to five go unreported,
the library association estimates.
''The atmosphere
is a little better than it used to be,'' Krug says. ''I
think some of the pressure has been taken off of books by
the Internet, because so much is happening on the
Internet.''
According to the
ALA, at least 65 challenges last year led to a book
being pulled.
In Louisville,
Ky., a high school principal told 150 English students to
drop Beloved, Toni Morrison's Pulitzer
Prize-winning novel about an ex-slave who has
murdered her baby daughter. At least two parents had
complained that Beloved includes depictions of
violence, racism, and sex.
In Burlingame,
Calif., Mark Mathabane's Kaffir Boy, a memoir
about growing up poor and black in apartheid-era South
Africa, was banned from an intermediate school after a
parent complained about a two-paragraph scene in which
men pay boys for sex. (Hillel Italie, AP with
additional reporting by The Advocate)
