Highland Park ISD parents start group to fight books’ suspension

A new group of Highland Park ISD parents is fighting to get seven suspended books back into the English classroom.

Two Highland Park High School moms, Laurie Dodic Steinberg and Natalie Davis, organized a meeting Sunday night with about 40 parents and students. The group is launching an email campaign to protest the books’ suspension and show support for high school English teachers.

Superintendent Dawson Orr suspended the books from high school instruction last week after parents contacted district officials and circulated emails with excerpts of sex scenes and references to mature themes, such as rape, abuse and abortion. The books cannot be taught, pending a review by a committee of teachers, parents and students. The books are still available in the school’s library.

The seven suspended books are The Art of Racing in the Rain; The Working Poor: Invisible in America; Siddhartha; The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian; An Abundance of Katherines; The Glass Castle: A Memoir; and Song of Solomon.

Three of the suspended books are scheduled for use in this year’s high school English classes. Some 10th-grade classes were already reading The Art of Racing in the Rain, but teachers were asked to end the lesson and rearrange their units until the book is reviewed.

Steinberg said Highland Park ISD officials are violating the district’s own policy, which says “access to challenged material shall not be restricted during the reconsideration process.”

“They have pulled The Art of Racing in the Rain right out of the hands of the sophomore English students,” she said. “They can say it’s in the library all they want, but the fact is they’ve pulled these books in the middle of the six weeks and are now asking the teachers to scramble for a whole new lesson plan. It’s just incredibly sad.”

Orr said students can still check the seven books out of the library or read them during free time. “We have not banned the books or pulled them from the shelves,” he said.

Orr said he expects the committee to review each book over four to eight weeks. The Art of Racing in the Rain is the first book scheduled for review. The Glass Castle and The Working Poor: Invisible in America are not planned for use until the second semester.

Steinberg, who has three children, said the tough topics in the books prepare students for college and adulthood. Some of them are used in Advanced Placement English classes, which are taught at the college level.

“These books could have the potential to make some people uncomfortable, but having our children grow up in the sheltered environment — The Bubble — our children need to be exposed to different ideas and ways of life for others,” she said. “We’re doing a disservice to our students if we don’t broaden their minds and let them know more about the outside world.”

Tavia Hunt, a parent who raised objections, said last week that the books should be available in the library but shouldn’t be part of the high school curriculum.

“It’s impossible to shelter your child in our society. They are bombarded with music, with books, with movies,” Hunt said. “They are bombarded, so let’s give them a safe place at school where they can spend the day without a classroom where they read obscenities.”

Highland Park ISD’s book debate coincides with Banned Books Week, an annual event that celebrates the freedom to read and calls attention to book challenges at schools, bookstores and libraries.

Deborah Caldwell-Stone, deputy director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said book challenges often coincide with Banned Books Week because it is at the start of the school year when parents receive their child’s syllabus. She said she sees Highland Park’s book suspensions as censorship, even if the books remain on library shelves.

“You are removing the books from classrooms,” she said. “Literally, you are taking books out of the hands of students who intended to work with them with the guidance of teachers. So it’s hard not to see it as a form of censorship.”

But Caldwell-Stone said book debates “are an opportunity for everybody to think about these freedoms and these values and their importance to our society.”

“We sometimes find we can even change people’s minds,” she said.

Author Sherman Alexie tweeted Monday about Highland Park High School suspending his book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Alexie said on Twitter that the “real reason” why his book gets banned is “because it’s about the triumph of a liberal Native American rebel.”

The young adult fiction book, based on Alexie’s experiences, was the third-most-challenged book of 2013 because of strong language and references to drugs and sex, according to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. The top two challenged books of 2013 were the Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.

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