Academia, Free Speech, Society, Uncategorized

“Dirty” Is in the Mind of the Beholder: Children’s Picture Book Banned from Elementary Libraries in Pennsylvania School District

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger

Some people have no sense of humor. Some people find obscenity where there is none. Case in point: Earlier this year, parents of a kindergarten student in the Annville-Cleona School District made a complaint about The Dirty Cowboy, a humorous picture book that their child brought home from the school library. The parents felt that Adam Rex’s illustrations of the cowboy’s partial nudity in the book were “pornographic” and wanted it banned.  In April, the school board agreed with the parents and voted unanimously to remove the book from school libraries in the district.

Note: Before the school board’s vote, the district’s book review committee voted 5-1 to remove the book, with Cleona librarian Anita Mentzer voting against it. Other committee members included Annville-Cleona Superintendent Steven Houser, the assistant superintendent, the technology director, and Cleona Elementary’s principal. (School Library Journal)

There were protests against the banning of The Dirty Cowboy by free-speech organizations and an online petition in favor of repealing the ban that was signed by more than 300 people. The National Coalition Against Censorship and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression sent a letter to the district asking that the book be returned to school library shelves.

An excerpt from the letter:

The practical effect of acceding to any request to restrict access to materials is to invite others to demand changes to reflect their beliefs, which would leave school officials vulnerable to multiple, possibly conflicting, demands, and leave the library in tatters. T he role of the library is to allow students and parents to make choices according to their own interests, experiences, and family values. No one has to read a book simply because it’s on the library shelf. We strongly urge you to keep The Dirty Cowboy in Annville-Cleona elementary school libraries. The decision to remove the book not only accedes to a specific viewpoint about the acceptability of nudity, but also deprives the entire student body of access to a highly praised book that many students, and their parents, would wish to read. Those who object to this book are entitled to their view, but they may not impose it on others. Any other decision threatens the principle that is essential to individual freedom, democracy, and a good education: the right to read, inquire, question, and think for ourselves.

Tim White reported in the Lebanon Daily News that despite outcry from the community, national media coverage, letters from the American Library Association and other organizations, and numerous pleas to reconsider, “the board refused to take up the matter again, citing concerns of causing a counter-controversy.” The board “stuck to its decision that the book was too dirty for young eyes.”

I’ll let you judge the book in question. Following is…

  • A summary of The Dirty Cowboy taken from an article that appeared in School Library Journal
  • a link to a Macmillan website where you can view illustrations in the book
  • three videos on the subject of the book banning
  • a list of honors and awards the book has received

Book Summary (SLJ)

The award-winning book tells the tale of a freckle-faced cowboy who decides to take his annual bath in a nearby river and asks his dog to guard his clothes. But the two get into fracas when the dog doesn’t recognize his fresh-smelling owner and refuses to hand over his clothes. The illustrations carefully conceal the cowboy’s private parts “while still keeping a G rating,” according to SLJ‘s review off the book.

The Dirty Cowboy illustrations

The Dirty Cowboy’s honors and awards include the following:

  • Parents Choice Gold Medal
  • Golden Kite Award (SCBWI – For Excellence in Picture Book Text)
  • First Prize in the 2004 Marion Vannett Ridgway Awards
  • International Reading Association 2004 Notable Book
  • Bulletin Blue Ribbon (The Bulletin for the Center for Children’s Books)
  • Finalist for the Spur Award (Western Writers of America)
  • Finalist for Southeast Booksellers Association 2004 Book Award
  • Nominated for Georgia Picture Book Award

Comments made by Amy Timberlake, author of The Dirty Cowboy, during an interview with Blogging Censorship:

If one or two parents can get books removed from a public library, where will it stop? Will there be any books left in the library? I tell you, everybody has opinions about books, and everybody has gotten offended now and again by a book. (If you haven’t, you’re not a reader.) It doesn’t mean the book shouldn’t be on the shelves.

Anyway, this is one of the reasons we hire people with special training to care for our libraries. Librarians have a process for choosing and buying books for everybody (and in the case of schools, these books also support the teachers’ curriculum).

It’s one thing to free shelf space because a book is not being checked out, but it’s quite another to have a well-used book banned because of the objections of a few parents…

Some Questions

  • Do you think the illustrations of the cowboy’s partial nudity border on obscenity?
  • Do you think a book should be banned from a public school library because the parents of one child object to it?
  • Do you think that one or two people or an organization should have the right to impose their views of literature and art on others who may have different perspectives from theirs?

SOURCES

PA School District Bans ‘The Dirty Cowboy’ for Partial Nudity (School Library Journal)

A-C board to vote tonight on book ban (Lebanon Daily News)

‘The Dirty Cowboy’ author: Book ban ‘ridiculous’ (Lebanon Daily News)

COLUMN: Book ban is not community’s desire (Lebanon Daily News)

A-C residents complain about ‘The Dirty Cowboy’ ban (Lebanon Daily News)

American Library Association opposes ban of ‘The Dirty Cowboy’ (Lebanon Daily News)

U.S. News: School District Bans ‘The Dirty Cowboy’ Book (Newsy)

School districts shouldn’t ban books (Partiot-News)

Annville-Cleona School Board stays strong on decision to ban ‘The Dirty Cowboy’ (Partiot-News)

‘The Dirty Cowboy’ mess is about a lot more than one book (Patriot-News)

Nancy Eshelman: ‘Dirty’ pictures lead to banning of book about a bath (Patriot-News)

Pa. school board, parents spar over banning of Dirty Cowboy (First Amendment Center)

The So-Not-Dirty Cowboy Author Speaks (Blogging Censorship/National Coalition Against Censorship)

Letter to Members of the School Board Annville-Cleona School District (National Coalition Against Censorship and the American Booksellers Foundation)

134 thoughts on ““Dirty” Is in the Mind of the Beholder: Children’s Picture Book Banned from Elementary Libraries in Pennsylvania School District”

  1. Off topic–but on the subject of censorship:

    Google sees ‘alarming’ level of government censorship
    Web giant says that in the past six months it received more than 1,000 requests from government officials for the removal of content. It complied with more than half of them.
    by Steven Musil June 17, 2012
    http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57454920-93/google-sees-alarming-level-of-government-censorship/?tag=cnetRiver

    Excerpt:
    Google reports it has seen an “alarming” incidence in government requests to censor Internet content in the past six months.

    The Web giant said it received more than 1,000 requests from governments around the world to remove items such as YouTube videos and search listings. The company, which said it complied with more than half the requests, released a catalog of those requests as part of its biannual Global Transparency Report.

    “Unfortunately, what we’ve seen over the past couple years has been troubling, and today is no different,” Dorothy Chou, Google’s senior policy analyst, said in a blog post. “When we started releasing this data, in 2010, we noticed that government agencies from different countries would sometimes ask us to remove political content that our users had posted on our services. We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it’s not.”

    Google said it had received 461 court orders for the removal of 6,989 items, consenting to 68 percent of those orders. It also received 546 informal requests, complying with 46 percent of those requests. The study doesn’t reflect censorship activity from countries such as China and Iran, which block content without notifying Google.

    “Just like every other time, we’ve been asked to take down political speech,” Chou wrote. “It’s alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect — western democracies not typically associated with censorship.”

  2. Witch Hunt
    Why The Religious Right Is Crusading To Exorcise Harry Potter Books From Public Schools And Libraries
    March 2002
    By Rob Boston
    http://www.au.org/church-state/march-2002-church-state/featured/witch-hunt

    Excerpt:
    Robert Fichthorn had decided to take a stand.

    Fichthorn, captain of the Penryn, Pa., “fire police,” a volunteer body that provides traffic control services during fires, auto accidents and civic events, declared in late January that his officers would not help cordon off streets during a YMCA-sponsored triathlon scheduled for this September.

    Fichthorn’s reason surprised many in the community. Despite its Christian roots, Fichthorn asserted, the YMCA is in fact supporting witchcraft by allowing students taking part in an after-school program to read the popular “Harry Potter” books. The fire police would do nothing, he insisted, to aid this nefarious behavior.

    “I don’t feel right taking our children’s minds and teaching them [witchcraft],” Fichthorn hold the Lancaster New Era. “As long as we don’t stand up, it won’t stop.”

    Fichthorn’s declaration hit the local papers and promptly sparked an uproar in the tiny central Pennsylvania community. But things really got interesting after the story was circulated nationally by the Associated Press and spread worldwide over the Internet. Irate residents squared off in letters to the editor. YMCA officials were swamped with messages from all over the country and even overseas as people offered to stand in for the fire police.

    Newspaper columnists blasted Fichthorn and the rest of his department as narrow-minded and silly. Sports Illustrated cited the flap as “This Week’s Sign of the Apocalypse.” The Denver Post gave Fichthorn its “Doofus of the Month” award.

    Many in the community and surrounding area were not pleased with the attention. “Yes, all across the country, people are reading about the Penryn Fire Police decision to spurn the triathlon because Harry Potter goes against their Christian morals,” groused Gil Smart, a columnist with the Lancaster Sunday News. “And all across the country, people are thinking: What bumpkins.”

    But if the Penryn Fire Police are bumpkins for hating Harry Potter, they are not the only ones. All over the country, Religious Right groups and local activists have put the Potter series in their theological crosshairs. The Penryn incident captured national headlines, but it is in no way an aberration.

    According to the American Library Association (ALA), the Potter series, authored by Scottish writer J.K. Rowling, now holds the dubious distinction of being the most censored books in America. Public schools and libraries in many communities are under siege as far-right forces demand that the books be removed outright or placed on restricted access.

    At first glance, the books look like unlikely candidates for all this fuss. Designed for pre- and early teens, the series recounts the adventures of Harry Potter, an orphan growing up in London. Verbally abused and forced to live in a dingy space at his domineering uncle’s house, Potter’s fortunes take a dramatic turn for the better when he learns he is descended from a long line of wizards and is invited to attend Hogwarts, a private academy for wizards in training.

    The series is phenomenally popular, and the four books so far have sold in the millions worldwide. Late last year, a movie based on the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, opened to long lines and generally favorable reviews.

    But not everyone is wild about Harry. Religious Right forces, including TV preacher Pat Robertson’s “700 Club,” James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition and a host of far-right lesser lights are convinced that the books promote evil and the occult and they are spurring local activists to drive the books from public schools and libraries.

  3. Religious Right Censors’ Worst Nightmare: Why We’ll Miss Judith Krug
    Apr 14, 2009 by Rob Boston in Wall of Separation
    http://au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/religious-right-censors-worst-nightmare-why-well-miss-judith-krug

    Excerpt:
    It’s pretty easy these days to walk into mostly any public library in the country and check out J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye or John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. You can do that in a large part thanks to a woman named Judith Krug.

    Judith, who ran the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom since 1967, was a life-long censorship foe who conceived the now internationally famous “Banned Books Week.” She raised awareness of book censorship in America and devised strategies to combat it.

    Judith died Saturday at age 69 after a battle with stomach cancer. We are all a little poorer for that.

    Not surprisingly. Judith’s work brought her into conflict with the Religious Right. In 1995, Religious Right activists in Virginia tried to start a new group targeting public libraries. They called it “Family Friendly Libraries.” The organization, which was in cahoots with Focus on the Family, proposed taking all of the books fundamentalist Christians didn’t like – tomes dealing with human sexuality, “the occult,” “non-traditional” families and so on – and isolating them in a special room or getting rid of them entirely.

    Judith would have none of that. I interviewed her for a story about the Religious Right attack on libraries, and her views were clear: Censorship was not the answer. Rather, she said, parents should get more involved with their children and make sure the library materials they choose are appropriate.

    It was – dare I say it? – a rather conservative solution.

    A few years ago, when Religious Right activists nationwide went after J.K. Rowling’s popular “Harry Potter” books, Judith again rushed to the ramparts. Judith knew there was something special about a series of books that had captivated even reluctant readers, and she was not going to let the Religious Right take them away from children. The anti-Potter campaign soon collapsed under the weight of its own silliness.

    To Judith, censorship was simply a lousy idea – no matter the reason. When some people called for removing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from public schools because of its racially insensitive language, Judith was the first one to point out why that’s misguided. She’d rather we examine the times that produced the book and learn from that.

    Judith helped me understand that despite our hallowed First Amendment, book censorship has a long lineage in America. For many years even in the 20th century, “Societies for the Suppression of Vice” worked in concert with conservative religious groups to attack material deemed “blasphemous” or “sacrilegious.” The books attacked were in no way pornographic; in fact, many are today considered classics. Yet book store owners could be criminally prosecuted for selling them.

  4. ‘Dirty Cowboy’ book pulled from schools
    http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2012/04/30/Dirty-Cowboy-book-pulled-from-schools/UPI-11071335806194/

    Excerpt:
    Superintendent Steven Houser told the Lebanon (Pa.) Daily News the parents “were asked what do you feel might be the result of viewing or reading this material, and their answer was, ‘Children may come to the conclusion that looking at nudity is OK and therefore pornography is OK.'”

    Amy Timberlake, author of “The Dirty Cowboy,” wrote on her blog that she was disappointed by the decision.

    “To be clear, this fight is not about ‘The Dirty Cowboy’ … This fight is about libraries providing access to all sorts of books [the ones we like and the ones we don’t], for all sorts of people. None of us want a vehement few choosing the books we get to read,” she wrote.

  5. Mike,

    Children must be taught that the human body is a “dirty” thing. Liberal wingnuts don’t know obscenity when they see it. Books like “The Dirty Cowboy” will lead children to reading pornography, doncha know!

  6. The idea that a parent gets upset seeing his child reading a book that has “a naked figure with the private parts covered up” is OK; it’s also OK for that parent to tell the child that he may no longer read that book; it’s OK for the parent to send a note into school saying he wants the child’s book-borrowing list so he can cross off those he wishes to be withheld from HIS CHILD. For him to go beyond that is for him to go beyond HIS rights to control what HIS child reads. That’s the only problem with the idea. Just as nobody should take away the parental right for him to allow his child to read a book with a picture of a naked cowboy with the “private parts covered up,” neither should anyone allow him to take away a different parent’s right to go ahead and allow their own child to read that book, or for that book to be offered to the children of nasty liberals or nut jobs.

    The idea is TAKE CARE OF YOUR OWN FAMILY while you allow the freedoms that America is known for to provide the framework within which other people will take care of their own families without your issues dominating how THEY do that.

  7. The ten thousand dollar question is why would such a book be in the library in the first place? Common sense would dictate, if you saw your child flipping through a book and about every other page shows a naked figure with the private parts covered up, you would wonder what they are reading? The next question would be why? It is expected for all the left wing liberal types shrieking in horror because a group of parents chose that the book be removed. Nevermind their right to vote and decide what should be in the library and what shouldn’t be. Nut jobs want any book in there period. Nevermind if it is any good or not. Especially if it is laced with nudity or profanity. It probably follows that these wingnuts also object to the school internet having filters to weed out all the porn sites and questionable material.

    1. Barney,

      I assume none of the mirrors in your house are full length to keep you from seeing those dirty human parts. It’s disgusting the equipment God gave us to reproduce. No child should know anything about sex until they are married off and they all should be home schooled. That’s the ticket.

  11. I had to comment so there weren’t 69 comments for this thread. I didn’t’ want someone getting the wrong idea and rushing off to the PTA or school board about it.

  13. Read “Woman’s Evolution” by Evelyn Reed. Magnificent piece of work.

    Now, I had a friend whose name I have forgotten, co-activist in the anti-child abuse days, he was from North or South Carolina (can’t remember that either) and his theory was that when small units of civilized nomads began to keep livestock, the men realized they had some role in procreation, and this “swelled their heads” (ahem, ahem!) and caused them to become patriarchal and to desire dominance.

    I always made fun of him for that theory. Gently of course, gently. But what can I say?

    It would be natural for women to choose (and Idealist says that in Sweden that happens) and for men to supplicate or fight to be chosen. It would also be natural that if there were to be a big struggle between two groups, the group that could easily make more reinforcements for themselves, over the course of several generations, would WIN, with the participation of very few of the enemy on their side. It would also be natural that if there were two groups fighting, and only ONE group could control the means of production for the society, that group would win.

    All of these things have gotten bolluxed up. So, again, what can I say?

  14. Rafflaw, LOL, marriage should always be a 60% their needs/40% your needs proposition- for both parties!

  17. When was the coup? I don’t know fore sure but I think it was about 10,000 years ago when women stopped being worshipped. Once agriculture got under way the bringing forth of life and its sustenance was no longer solely the provenance of women. Just a thought. 🙂

    (BBC did an interesting 3 part series titled “Divine Women – When God Was a Girl”. Pretty interesting if you get the chance to see it.)

    “Archaelogists may have found oldest human figurine ever
    Published: 8 May 09 12:33 CET

    Archaeologists have unearthed an Ice Age goddess statue in the Swabian Alb mountain range that may be the oldest ever found, German daily Südwest Presse reported on Friday.”

    http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20090508-19155.html

  19. Woosty: “My pet rabbit got worried by a dog and aborted her litter….I saw a pet mouse become terrified and actually eat all of her babies…
    But instinct in the wild is a terrible force for a reason. It has to overcome an even greater force to prevail.”
    ******

    All stress, environmental or emotional, is a potential killer in the wild because stress eats up energy and at some point that poses an existential problem for the stressed animal. That includes us. The response to the threats (stress) you describe while terrible is a pro-survival tactic. Fish under stress will (while gestating live young or producing eggs) reabsorb them, chickens under stress stop laying, kangaroos will expel their Joey etc. etc.

    Nature tilts toward preserving the life and health of the mother and the development and heath of the developing offspring- or even born but dependent offspring is secondary. Putting the fetus or dependent child first in nature is a luxury and there isn’t a lot of room for luxury- as a given- in nature.

    The prohibitions on abortion we have as human beings are built on falsehoods, a manufactured reality that doesn’t impact all females at the same level of investment. The prohibitions are unnatural. Every female in nature, except human females, sort it out for themselves.

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