The mother of an 8-year-old who borrowed Marvin Redpost: Is He a Girl? from the Tyler School library in New Lenox, Illinois, has decided to challenge the appropriateness of the easy-reader chapter book for primary-school students. Sheree Standard’s action has taken Tyler School Principal Christine Weaver by surprise, since just two weeks earlier the school had agreed to allow Standard to purchase the book to keep it out of circulation.
The Louis Sachar book recounts Marvin’s gender-identity crisis, which precipitates guilty dreams about playing hopscotch and wearing dresses. “I’m not saying this book can make my son gay,” Standard said in the May 4 Chicago Tribune. “I’m just asking what is [its] point?” She also said that she had only offered to buy the book because she thought she had no other recourse, charging Weaver with withholding information from her about the district’s request-for-reconsideration policy.
A reconsideration committee is expected to make recommendations about the title in several weeks.
Posted May 8, 2000.