Tampa Schools Retain
Serial-Killer Encyclopedias
With the go-ahead of two Hillsborough County (Fla.) School District materials review committees, The A–Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers by Harold Schechter and David Everitt and The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers by Michael Newton have been reshelved at the district’s high schools. The decision was made over the objections of Valrico resident Tony Pawlisz, who filed a complaint after his 16-year-old son brought the Schechter book home.
Pawlisz, who is running for a seat on the Hillsborough County Commission, voiced a fear that the books’ gruesome details might incite young readers into committing Columbine-like acts. “If anything happens from this point on, the blood is on their hands,” Pawlisz said in the April 20 St. Petersburg Times.
Conceding one challenged book’s “sensationalist format,” Durant High School media specialist Carol Schaefer wrote in her defense of The A–Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers that it “was one of the few books that dealt with serial killers and the ‘pop culture’ that exists around them in our society.”
Pawlisz has announced his intention to appeal the decision.
Posted April 29, 2002.
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