Karin Perry says she fully supports Norman Public School’s reconsideration policy but says that to cancel the author’s visit before doing a full review of the book was a “knee-jerk reaction,” and that they should have exempted the complainant’s child rather than canceling the event for everyone.
Why people think they have the right to force their feelings and opinions on everyone else is beyond me.” “What irritates me is that the parent could have just asked for their student to sit out of the author visit. Because of faulty administrative action, the opinions of one parent were allowed to dictate the experience of Whittier’s entire student body. It is important to remember that while the reconsideration committee ultimately ruled in favor of Glass, the Whittier parent’s attempt at censorship was still successful in that Ellen Hopkins’s visit to the school was canceled. As the reconsideration committee writes, “the quality of writing is outstanding and motivating to reluctant readers.” It might not be enough if Glass was merely a fear-mongering, basic cautionary tale, but because its free-verse style is interesting and its characters are realistic and empathetic, it contributes to a young reader’s understanding of literature while delivering its message. It is also important that, despite its controversial material, Hopkins’s work has literary value that redeems it. Karin Perry and Ellen Hopkins were also sure to bring up the potential impact Glass can have on preventing a student reader from being involved in drugs or unsafe sex after all, the lifestyle portrayed in these verse novels is far from glamorous. The Norman Public Schools reconsideration committee’s results echo this sentiment, saying “the powerful message on teen drug addiction far outweighs the concern about the sexual content.”
“Reading books with these topics allows students to experience these things from the safety of a book,” Karin Perry says. If it is true, as education scholar Belinda Louie suggests, that parents object to texts with undesirable worldviews, it is also, thankfully, the recognized importance of those worldviews that can save a text from censorship.
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