Banned Books Week: The Belated Edition

Banned Books Week actually ended on Oct. 3rd, but I just read this rather remarkable (and not in a good way) account of Risha Mullins Salem Witch Trial-like experience and had to share it here. I encourage you each to go and read the entire post here. [Update: Hmmm, it's disappeared from her site, but here it is elsewhere.] Here's just a snippet:

Remembering when the Moo Moo Book Club kids taped posters of their favorite books all over the school—totally taking ownership of their books by taping “recommended by” plaques beneath each poster—and how after that, non-club kids would stop by my room and ask to borrow a book. Remembering Teen Read Week of 2008 when the 130 book club kids marched through the school, boom box blaring, tossing bookmarks through the Ag. department, the Science and Math wing, the Freshman hall, and the Board of Education building, dancing, chanting “Moo Moo Book Club,” proudly sporting their recommended book posters on strings around their necks. Remembering the way it felt to post the newspaper articles about the club on my walls: the one about taking my club to Virginia Tech, where Nikki Giovanni gave the book club a private writing workshop after reading her book Blues for all the Changes; the one article in the state newspaper that discussed my having gotten the prestigious grant; and the one about the club’s “Jewish Culture Project,” where club members signed up to take Hebrew classes, decorate doors in facets of Jewish Culture, and attend service at a local synagogue, and then when Jewish, Holocaust-surviving author of Bondi's Brother, Irving Roth, flew to our school for a book talk and assembly. And then, remembering the way I beamed when the Literacy Committee chair asked me to take her place because I had changed the notion of literacy at Montgomery County High. 

Remembering the email that stopped it all. Two years ago this week. A parent whose child had chosen to read Lessons from a Dead Girl by Jo Knowles, and how that parent sent an email to the superintendent, the board members, the principals, and me saying that I taught “soft pornography.”