Forever Returns to Illinois Schools—
For Now
A committee of educators and parents reversed December 12 a four-year-old ban of Forever by Judy Blume from the six middle-school libraries of Elgin (Ill.) Area School District U-46. However, parent Jean McNamara plans an appeal to the school board because, she said in the December 13 Chicago Tribune, Forever “shows teens committing sins.” McNamara, who home-schools her children, went on to advise area Christian parents to remove their children from the “pagan school district.”
“I think it’s a victory for the students,” disagreed Eastview Middle School librarian Joan Devine, who spearheaded the reconsideration request by all the district’s middle- and high-school librarians. In 1999, Devine narrowly lost a solo attempt to reinstate the book; district policy states that banned books can be reconsidered every two years. Forever has remained in Elgin’s high-school libraries.
The original challenge cited the story, involving a sexually active teen romance, and the explicit language used to tell it. “Judy Blume leaves nothing to the imagination,” Bartlett High School 9th-grader Will Palmisano agreed at the hearing, according to the December 13 Arlington Heights Daily Herald. “And kids my age really need to know what’s going on.”
Posted December 17, 2001.
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