{"id":58,"date":"2012-06-04T00:15:25","date_gmt":"2012-06-04T04:15:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=18732"},"modified":"2016-07-01T16:56:33","modified_gmt":"2016-07-01T20:56:33","slug":"banned-books-awareness-the-family-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/2012\/06\/04\/banned-books-awareness-the-family-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Banned Books Awareness: \u201cThe Family Book\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Todd Parr has written over 30 children\u2019s books, and he is the winner of two National Parenting Publication Awards, as well as three Oppenheim Gold Awards; but his The Family Book<\/em>\u00a0(preschool-grade 2; 2004) has stirred up some controversy.<\/p>\n

In a whimsical, engaging way, the daily lives of all kinds of families are depicted, celebrating their differences and their similarities; and supporting acceptance of them all.<\/p>\n

The joyful art features both human and animal characters- such as pigs portraying both clean and dirty families. Some families include stepmoms, stepdads, stepsisters, or stepbrothers; some adopt children; other families have two moms or two dads, while some children have only one parent.<\/p>\n

Combined with these differences are the ways they are all alike: they hug each other, are sad when they lose someone they love, and enjoy celebrating together. The Family Book <\/em>also serves as a teaching tool about bullying.<\/p>\n

An otherwise harmless and typical children\u2019s book, right? Not in Erie, Illinois.<\/p>\n

This past week, an Illinois school district has banned the critically-acclaimed book all because of a single page referencing same-sex parents, with the accompanying line, \u201csome families have two moms or two dads.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a WHBF-TV Quad Cities report-, which has since been removed from the station\u2019s website- Erie School District 1 Superintendent, Bradley Cox, stated, \u201cSeveral parents argued that the book discussed different types of family structures and those are issues that shouldn\u2019t be taught at the elementary school level.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the book was provided by the\u00a0Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network<\/a>\u00a0(GLSEN), the district has moved to ban everything the organization has provided or sponsored, which includes some very popular and successful anti-bullying programs used nationwide.<\/p>\n

Lindsay Brookhart, a mother of three children in the district, told WHBF, \u201cGive me a break! Is this seriously an issue in our town? I think everyone needs to take a step back, research the materials themselves, and see that it\u2019s not anything that is age-inappropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brookhart said that the censoring of these materials, which have been proven effective in schools nationwide in combating bullying, would hurt the progress they have made at the local level.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve seen it in my own household,\u201d said Brookhart.<\/p>\n

Lindsay’s daughter, Kyiah, will be in the third grade next year and took away a lot from the school’s anti\u2013bullying programs sponsored by GLSEN. Her favorite of which is \u201cNo Name Calling Week,\u201d which is now banned under the new policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell if someone says something mean to you then you shouldn\u2019t believe what they say because they’re bullies and they’re not right,\u201d said Kyiah.<\/p>\n

Brookhart, along with more than a hundred other parents have signed a petition protesting the ban, a decision which impacts campaigns like No-Name Calling Week, and other materials co-authored by the National Association of Elementary-School Principals.<\/p>\n

But Superintendent Cox claims he was only listening to the voice of\u00a0his community. Unfortunately, yet again, the heated mob-mentality of a few, fueled by emotion rather than reason, has dictated policy for the many.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s probably a bit of a misrepresentation to say that it\u2019s just a few parents who have a concern when in fact, at the end of the day, it was a school board representing the views, values and philosophies of a community that really made the decision,\u201d said Cox. \u201cI think our community has very clearly said if those topics come up with 6-year-olds or 7-year-olds that they would rather have those topics discussed at home. We\u2019re still going to teach tolerance, we\u2019re still going to teach diversity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cox says that the curriculum will not be changed, only the materials that will be used to teach the students; but the district\u2019s policy from this point on states, according to Cox, that under no circumstances will topics involving alternative lifestyles be discussed at the elementary level.<\/p>\n

But as every parent knows, hate is not something you are born with, it is something that is learned. If these parents are so bent out of shape over a single reference to a lifestyle that is a fact of life, then it\u2019s safe to say that their children will grow up as ignorant and as intolerant as they are.<\/p>\n

How can you teach tolerance and the bringing of a community together as one, but make it quite clear that certain types of people are not welcome in that community?<\/p>\n

Nowhere in the 32-page book does it promote, encourage, or sell any life situation over another. It simply looks at the world and says, as a matter of fact, \u201cThese are the many people of Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Todd Parr addressed the members of the Erie, Illinois school board in a video response that can be seen on YouTube here: http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=IwNqCkDwZPs<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For more information on the Banned Books Awareness and Reading for Knowledge project and the complete list of titles covered, please visit the official website at http:\/\/www.deepforestproductions.com\/BBARK.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Sources: Wikipedia, Amazon, Huffington Post, WHBF-CBS News, School Library Journal<\/em>
\n\u00a9 2012 R. Wolf Baldassarro\/Deep Forest Productions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Todd Parr has written over 30 children\u2019s books, and he is the winner of two National Parenting Publication Awards, as well as three Oppenheim Gold Awards; but his The Family Book\u00a0(preschool-grade 2; 2004) has stirred up some controversy. In a whimsical, engaging way, the daily lives of all kinds of […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[377,378,379,2,380],"tags":[110,200],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-banned-books","category-banned-books-awareness-and-reading-for-knowledge","category-censorship","category-social-change","category-society","tag-family-book","tag-lgbt"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1100,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions\/1100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}