School Removes The Land as Age-Inappropriate
A review committee at Turner Elementary School in New Tampa, Florida, has deemed The Land by Mildred Taylor age-inappropriate and removed it from its media-center shelves.
The committee said the novel, about a former slave during Reconstruction, was “above the maturity level of elementary students at Turner,” reported the April 14 St. Petersburg Times. School officials said they will donate the book to a middle school.
The Times said the committee’s three parents were outvoted by the two administrators, three teachers, and the media specialist.
“I thought it was an excellent book,” said parent Jeanann Kuch, who voted to retain it. “I have mixed emotions about [the decision].” Parent Craig Younger would have preferred to keep the book, but with restrictions. “Unfortunately, it had to be keep it or remove it,” he said. “There were no other options. Now that we’re taking this book from 5th-graders who read at a higher level, that’s another form of censorship. Either way, I don’t think anybody really wins.”
Darryl Brown had filed a challenge to the book, which his 11-year-old daughter Ashyaa was reading from the school’s accelerated-reading list, over its use of the n-word. “It’s a very small victory,” he said. “We won the battle, but the war is the situation that allowed this to come into the school system, the process that the county used and the media specialist used to allow the books in.”
Brown said he is preparing to file another challenge, seeking the removal of The Starplace by Vicki Grove, a story about an interracial middle-school friendship in 1960s Oklahoma that also contains the n-word.
Posted on April 18, 2008. Discuss.