404 Day: Protecting Kids from ... What?

By Barbara Fister. Yesterday I followed tweets from Gretchen Caserotti, director of the public library in Meridian, Idaho, as she attended a school board hearing over Sherman Alexie’s young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Alexie is one of my favorite writers. It’s hard to imagine what is so objectionable about this story about a bookish Native kid who gets bullied as much for bookishness as for being an Indian at a mostly white school. But then, I couldn’t really get why people in my true-blue home state of Minnesota objected to Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor and Park, either. Parents complained that some of the characters in the book talk like, um, teenagers. Actually, like fourth-graders. If you don’t like that kind of language, don’t go near the playground during recess. Read more...