Literary Suppression from Iowa to Australia
A school superintendent in Carroll, Iowa has ordered the removal of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? from a high-school reading list after a parent complained about an oral sex scene in the novel. (Goes to show; having never read the book nor seen the movie, I never knew the title was a pun.) The superintendent is careful to point out that, for now, the book remains available in the school’s library where, according to the librarian, 13 of the 25 copies are currently checked out. And the kids aren’t taking this quietly; they’re organizing a protest against the ban. “Everyone has heard things much worse things in the hallway at school or on the bus to school or on the Internet,” says one student. “Pulling this book really is not going to shelter a kid.”
Meanwhile, Australian teens have been denied the opportunity to read John Dale’s YA novel Army of the Pure after Scholastic Australia cancelled the book to avoid offending Muslims. The adventure story revolves around a group of children being chased by Afghan terrorists, which led booksellers and librarians Down Under to tell the publisher they weren’t going to carry it. According to a Scholastic executive, “The reality is if the gatekeepers won’t support it, it can’t be published.”
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