Grade school bans book

Ethnic slurs and references to masturbation in One Fat Summer prompt a parent's complaint.

By BARBARA BEHRENDT

© St. Petersburg Times, published October 26, 1999

CRYSTAL RIVER -- Rock Crusher Elementary School has pulled the book One Fat Summer off the shelf after a parent complained that it contains derogatory terms for African-Americans, Jews and Italians and it describes a male character masturbating.

The book, by Robert Lipsyte, is listed as appropriate reading material at the fourth-grade level in the Accelerated Reading Program.

But Rock Crusher principal Nancy Simon, who first learned of the parent complaint over the weekend, said Monday that the book is not appropriate for elementary-aged children.

"I was totally appalled," she said after reading several of the objectionable passages. "The word that describes the book is "egregious.' "

After the concerns about the book reached Mark Brunner, the district's coordinator of elementary education, he immediately began to gather information about which other schools in the county might also have One Fat Summer in their media centers. Simon said she told Brunner that she thought the book didn't belong in any of the elementary schools, and Brunner agreed.

"Based on the excerpts I heard, the parents had a legitimate concern," he said.

Simon said she wasn't even sure middle school students should read it.

Ordinarily when a book's content is questioned, the schools convene a committee to discuss whether the book is appropriate. That will happen in this case eventually, but Simon said that there was no doubt about what to do with this book immediately.

"We saw it. We pulled it. There was just no question," Simon said. "This is what we call a no-brainer."

This is not the first time the book's appropriateness was questioned.

In 1997, a parent of a seventh-grader in Levittown, Long Island, complained, and the superintendent there pulled it from the shelves of Jonas Salk Middle School. That ignited a debate about censorship. According to reports about the controversy, the book was returned to shelves after the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Long Island Coalition Against Censorship talked to school officials.

A cursory review of Internet sites listing the book on reading lists shows that despite its rating as appropriate at the fourth-grade level, it more frequently appears on middle school reading lists rather than elementary school reading lists.

The book is about a 14-year-old boy and his struggle to overcome a weight problem while dealing with some teenaged bullies. At one point, the book describes the main character's sexual fantasies and masturbation. In other parts, it uses derogatory words to describe Jews, Italians and African-Americans.

The book is part of an incentive reading program called Accelerated Reading. Students read books and take tests on those books, earning points in the process that can add up to group prizes or recognition.

Simon said that although other children had checked out One Fat Summer at her school, she had heard no other complaints and wasn't sure any of the other children had really read the book. No one has ever taken the test on the book.

She said she and her staff relied on the Accelerated Reading approved list for weeding out blatantly inappropriate books. But there have been other times when some books were pulled from the list. For example, she said some of her students are reading at eighth-, ninth- and 10th-grade levels, and sometimes those books are too mature for the elementary schoolchildren.

Screening every single book as it is purchased would be a daunting process. Brunner said school book collections can number more than 15,000 and that several thousand books are purchased each year.

Brunner said he did not know whether other schools also had One Fat Summer on their approved reading list. He planned to send a memo to media specialists to tell them about the concerns that had been raised.

Rock Crusher will convene a committee to review the book and determine whether it should be kept in a special reserve collection available to teachers and parents, or whether it should be recommended to be available for middle school use. If other schools also have the book, Brunner said they can follow that same process, which is set out in School Board policy.

While the policy means that different schools can theoretically make different decisions about a book, Brunner said that after he heard the objectionable passages in One Fat Summer, he felt confident that the book would not be available for general circulation in any of the county's elementary schools.

Brunner praised the Accelerated Reading program for the large increase in reading it has accomplished. But he noted that the large number of books coming through the schools do sometimes also cause this kind of question to be raised.

"To be able to screen everything when you're ordering 2,000 to 3,000 books a year would be very difficult," he said. "But we're lucky to have a vigilant administration and staff who really know the needs of the community and can respond to them."

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