Arizona School System Sidetracks
Detour for Emmy
Sympathizing with the complaint of a mother of 6th- and 7th-grade girls, Dysart Unified School District Superintendent Margo Seck has had Marilyn Reynolds’s Detour for Emmy permanently pulled from library shelves throughout the El Mirage, Arizona, school district. In addition, school officials will review Reynolds’ entire “True-to-Life Series from Hamilton High.”
“Would I want my child to have access to this type of material?” Seck asked rhetorically in the March 6 Phoenix Arizona Republic. “No, I would not.”
Cited as one of ALA’s Best Books for Young Adults in 1993, Detour for Emmy recounts the choices that the sexually active title character must make after an unprotected encounter with her boyfriend. Reynolds, who is a retired high-school English teacher, denied that she intended the book to “paint a picture of normalcy.” Rather, she told the paper, she wanted to portray “a view of family life not unknown to some of the students in their district, I suspect.”
Posted March 13, 2000.
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