Raising Children is Heck

One of the most interesting news reports I stumbled across this week was from the New York Times and featured a picture book entitled “Go the ---- to Sleep” by Adam Mansbach and illustrated by Ricardo Cortes. Intended for adults but packaged as any other children’s book, this story is meant to give an inside look at what it really is like for parents as they attempt to put their children to bed at night. Interest in the item has risen so drastically over the last few months that the publisher is moving its release date from October to June 14^th of this year.

The main controversy behind the story is the objected use of swear words, but the idea of verbalizing such thoughts is upsetting parent groups as well. The article (see link below) goes on to discuss how children’s books have pushed boundaries over time by emphasizing material once thought unsuitable for children (they mention sloppy manners, untoward language, disobedience, etc.), but that parents’ books are not given the same leeway.

After reading the article, I do not see what the fuss is over the book itself. If it is intended for adults as a spoof of frustrating parental duties, and its call number reflects its classification as adult material, then I don’t see how parents could object to its publication and inclusion in library collections.

This story did make me think about the use of swear words in titles and on covers of books though, which is the real reason I wanted to discuss this topic with the class. What do libraries do if the titles of books use racial or offensive slurs? Or if the titles contain harsh swear words? It is no longer an issue of the material inside of the covers being offensive, but visual aspect of the book itself. 

I know that I have had books on my cart in the cataloging department before that have swear words in their titles (example: Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook: Crazy Delicious Recipes that Are Good to the Earth and Great for Your Bod by Kim Barnouin), but what happens when these books are sent to the branches and put on new arrivals displays? Is this even an issue?

Link to article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/weekinreview/22curse.html?_r=2&ref=books

See more by Google Books:

http://books.google.com/books?id=5OkHtwAACAAJ&dq=go%20the%20f%20to%20sleep&source=gbs_similarbooks

Blog 1

I recently read an article titled “‘Sexy’ Children’s Book Pulled from Library Shelves”. This article caught my attention for a number of reasons. First off, I was curious to find out what was exactly ‘sexy’ about the material, especially if this item was for an elementary school library. Secondly, I wanted to know what kind of reconsideration measures were taken in order for the book to be removed from the collection. It seems like a great topic for debate in regards to IF.

The article discusses an incident in Paradise Valley over “Lovingly Alice” by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, famously known for writing Shiloh, a Newberry Award winner. An 8-year-old girl took this book to her mother when she encountered content that she felt was mature for her age. The mother was appalled by what she found and complained to the school, which then removed the item from its shelves.

According to the article “The children's book is about a young girl with lots of questions about sex, and the discussion gets very detailed, with characters asking 'how long does it take?' and whether it was messy”. After reading this part of the article I went to Amazon.com to get a more detailed description of the plot of the book. School Library Journal describes it much differently than how it was portrayed in the news, with only one sentence containing any mention of sexual content (“Alice is concerned about being motherless and muddled about sex, and there's a fair amount of talk about it, much to Lester's embarrassment.”).

I need to conduct further research about the book and the process that was taken that resulted in its removal (nothing was mentioned about a formal proposal or process), but my initial reaction is that I believe that material should remain in the school library. The focus of the book is not sex, but the life and troubles of a teenage girl. Is it right to take the sexual themes out of the context of the story and use them as the basis for removal? The article also mentions that according to ALA, this is the second most banned/challenged book in libraries in the last decade. How are other libraries defending the right of this book to remain on the shelves?

Article link: http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/news/education/childrens-book-pulled-from-library-shelves-5-16-2011

Description from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Lovingly-Alice-Phyllis-Reynolds-Naylor/dp/068984400X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1305731715&sr=8-1