The short story is that when Roxboro Middle School principal Brian Sharosky saw the cover of the November 2008 issue of Nintendo Power he yanked it from the school library. Said cover featured a Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars character loading a gun.
It should be noted that the school librarian objected to the yanking because it bypassed the standard procedure for dealing with complaints about library materials.
Now the ACLU is involved because Principal Sharosky has violated the students’ constitutional right to cheat codes.
As a librarian and a gamer, I have the required level of outrage mixed with moderate surprise that Nintendo Power is still in print – have they heard of the Internet? But overriding all that, I can only say, “What the hell?”
Their middle school has Nintendo Power?
You know what my middle school had? Pilgrim’s freaking Progress. That’s all.
I’m always annoyed when I read about sexy, racy, slutty books being pulled from school libraries – and it’s not that I care about Intellectual Freedom – it’s that these kids are reading about rainbow parties and vampires playing baseball while I was reading:
As I walk'd through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a Denn; And I laid me down in that place to sleep: And as I slept I dreamed a Dream. I dreamed, and behold I saw a Man cloathed with Raggs, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own House, a Book in his hand, and a great burden upon his Back. I looked and saw him open the Book, and Read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled: and not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry; saying, what shall I do?
Pilgrim’s Progress is so long and boring the author John “You’re thinking of my brother Paul” Bunyan apologizes for it before it even starts: as so I penned It down, until at last it came to be, For length and breadth, the bigness which you see.
That's all we had — and if someone else had checked it out, then all we could hope for is that they might kindly recite passages from it that we might be humbled and edified.
