Don’t Say Poo-Poo Heads

Submitted by Beverly Goldberg on Wed, 07/13/2011 - 13:37

Cover of The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby

The parents of a 6-year-old who attends Channelview (Tex.) Independent School District’s Brown Elementary School has persuaded the school board to order removed from school-library shelves Dav Pilkey’s The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby.

Tammy Harris was reacting to what she saw as a double standard at the school. Her son, who had been suspended earlier in the school year for calling a classmate a “poo-poo head,” uttered the same endearment while reading out loud from a school-library copy of Super Diaper Baby as he was riding along in the car with his mother. “The only thing I heard from the back seat was ‘Hee-hee-hee, Poo-Poo Head is going to take poop and put it all over these people’s heads,’” Harris said in an interview that aired May 19 on KTRK-TV in Houston.

“I said, ‘Do you remember when you got in trouble last year and you got suspended for calling that little girl a poo-poo head and now [the school] allowed you to read something like that? Do you think that’s right?’ And he’s like, ‘No,’” Harris explained.

The reconsideration committee had recommended retention of the popular primary-grade graphic novel, which the Harrises appealed, conceding that heightening the visibility of the book would probably increase demand for it.

It remains to be seen whether the book’s removal will keep “poo-poo head” pejoratives from trending in suburban Houston.

Comments

Good Review, Beverly

That was a good review, Beverly. And clever too. The last sentence gave me a chuckle, for example.

Here’s what I wrote on it: “Poo Poo Head Kicked Out of School; Another School Board Removes Another Inappropriate Book.”

Oh yes, notice, as I pointed out in my own writing linked above, that the authors promote the ALA’s own “Banned Books Week”! Congratulations are in order for having the ALA’s principal work and views included directly in the text of a children’s book. A “banned” one, no less. Certainly that’s nothing to pooh-pooh.

Submitted by Dan Kleinman of SafeLibraries (not verified) on Sat, 07/16/2011 - 23:19.