Are you acquainted with Junie B. Jones? Junie B. ("the B stands for Beatrice. Except I don't like Beatrice. I just like B and that's all"), currently aged 6, is the star of delightful series of children's books.She is also #71 on the most-challenged and -banned list the ALA has compiled for 2000-2009.
Junie, you see, is a darling child who tells her adventures in a unique and self-posessed voice. She sometimes misspells words, and she makes an occasional grammatical error. She runs her poor first grade teacher, Mister, "He has another name too. But I just like Mister, and that's all.") into the ground. And she sometimes disobeys her parents. There's an element in town that objects. In a serious damn way. Junie B., as I said, is #71 on the challenged and banned list. She comes in 5 ahead of The Joy of Gay Sex.
Apparently these challenging and banning people can't wait until the kids are in high school to ban Huck Finn, so they'll go after his little, suburban sister.
And don't get me going on the people who've set their sights on preventing their children from reading And Tango Makes Three. Suffice it to say that if you fear your children's purity may be damaged by a story about two male penguins hatching out an egg together, the problem is most definitely with you. Rather than with the penguins.
3 comments:
Shee! Once you actually succeed in getting the little shytes to read, literacy and grammar take off like a freight train.
Make it a chore, however, with everything needing to be politically, grammatically, and "orthographically" accurate, and it is less likely to be something done with any enthusiasm. Or pleasure. Or at all.
Practise makes perfect.
Since I read this post over a week ago, I have seen at least eight of my 2nd graders reading these books. I didn't have the heart to tell them it's been banned.
(OTOH, it did make me thankful to have a sane librarian working at our school.)
It's a delightful series. Junie B. is perfectly charming.
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