The George County (Miss.) school board voted to remove three novels from high-school library shelves January 6, shortly after appointing two new board members. Newly elected member Larry McDonald initiated the ban on the books, two novels about the Vietnam War and John Steinbeck’s classic Of Mice and Men, for their use of profanity.
McDonald told the January 9 Pascagoula Mississippi Press that the school has a policy against students using profanity and the books’ availability in the library made him feel uncomfortable, even though the Steinbeck book is on the required reading list for the 10th-grade advanced English class. “It’s another situation where the students need to be informed as to what’s in there,” he said, “and the parents need the opportunity to say they don’t want their child to read the book.”
Principal Paul Wallace said he has received so many calls about the decision that he has been unable to return them all. He added that parents were notified in writing as to the contents of Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers and The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, the Vietnam books read in the 11th-grade college-prep English class.
School Superintendent Donnie Howell told reporters he planned to suggest to the board at their next meeting that it form a committee to handle parents’ objections to any reading material.
Posted January 13, 2003.