Color me confused.
I finally got all the books gathered together to donate to the local High School and delivered them this morning. The reception was a little lackluster, I must say. Most of the books were hardcover first editions, by debut authors, and fairly popular titles.
The librarian looked through them and seemed concerned that a few of them might not be appropriate. This is where my confusion comes in. This is a Senior High School, grades 9 - 12. None of the books were of an adult nature. Some of them were Historical Fiction, which I assumed might make history a little more interesting.
When I was in school, we had a wide variety of books in our library. Not all of them were the "Mary Poppins" type. Seriously, I can understand being discerning, but this seemed a wee bit like "1984".
Is there a librarian in the house? If so, would you like to comment on how books are chosen for school libraries? I'm really interested.
3 comments:
I am not a librarian I just share your pain of doing a good deed that was not recieved well. The next time I would donate them to a public libary. With so many public libaries going under I am sure they would really appreciate it and it wouldn't have the restrictions.
Well, I'm not a librarian, but I sell books to librarians, including high school librarians, and from what I can tell, a lot of the selection happens on a librarian by librarian basis. Some librarians are very concerned about books being too mature and pass on them, while others mix in plenty of adult books with their YA titles because they know that their students will read them. In general, I would say that ultra-conservative librarians are the exception rather than the rule.
Oh MAN don't even get me started on that bull! The only person who gets to say what my child can or cannot read is ME!! Not a teacher, not a librarian, nada! That's my job. We don't take too well to censorship in my house:)
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