You remember The Dirty Cowboy, our favorite book ban in May? School board members may be standing their ground, but they haven’t heard the last of residents perturbed by the ban. The Patriot-News and The Lebanon Daily News both featured an Op-Ed piece by Annville-Cleona parent Tim White this weekend. White writes:
“Although ACSD board President Tom Tschudy stated that he felt “reasonable minds can disagree,” he asked one parent if he would like him to bring Hustler magazine into the elementary library.
Is comparing a children’s book about taking a bath to Hustler magazine a reasonable comparison?
An undeniable correlation exists between literacy and success later in life, and parents are alarmed when one complainant can dictate immediate removal from their children’s reach of widely accepted, engaging material paid for by their tax dollars.”
We’re hoping of course, for a reasonable reconsideration of this beautifully illustrated, award-winning book and of the decisions which led to it being removed because of a single complaint about its content.
Five- and six-year-olds read a book about a bathing cowboy and see what’s there: a funny story about a bath, for which naturally, you disrobe. They don’t read nudity as sex. If anyone is reading a “dirty” (and I don’t mean muddy) side in this bath-time cowboy, it is particular adults. Adults like the school board president who is reading some bizarre, nonsensical parallel between a child’s picture book, which is absolutely not sexual in nature, and Hustler.