The Mountaineer Reading Room

Tracy Warner, longtime editorial page editor of the Wenatchee World, offers some thoughtful commentary on a recent book challenge in Leavenworth, Washington.  A parent felt the the book Alice on Her Way contains an inappropriate level of sexual content and should not have been available for circulation in a middle school library.  In what can best be described as a compromise, the school board agreed with the review committee’s recommendation to keep the book on the shelves “on a restricted basis.”  The parameters of the restriction are not discussed (I assume it involves specific parental consent), but Warner does a good job identifying the challenges  of collection development for young teenagers.  In a world saturated with mixed, hypocritcal, inaccurate, biased and targeted media messages, it’s nice to know that school libraries can still provide a space where kids can reverse the flow and challenge themselves at their own pace and on their own time.