School board leans toward allowing books

Danette Goulet

NEWPORT-MESA -- Most Newport-Mesa Unified School District board

members say they see no problem with two award-winning novels that fellow

trustee Wendy Leece asked them to reconsider before putting in the hands

of Newport Harbor High School students.

The school board is expected to vote tonight on the use of five

different middle and high school textbooks.

At the last meeting three weeks ago, Leece asked that two of those

books be reconsidered because of the works’ “graphic sexual content.”

Leece requested that the novels “Of Love and Shadows,” by South

American author Isabel Allende, and “Snow Falling on Cedars,” by David

Guterson, be pulled from the high school textbook list before school

board members approve it.

After reading the novels, most trustees said they see no problem with

the books.

“‘Snow Falling on Cedars’ is an elegant book, I thought,” trustee Jim

Ferryman said. “Life ain’t always pretty, and [sexual content] was just a

brief thing. It didn’t dominate the book. It was an insignificant thing,

I thought.”

Trustee Serene Stokes agreed with Ferryman’s assessment.

“I do not want us to be in a position of banning books,” she said. “I

would prefer a youngster read a book that might be questionable, than to

deny them access to a book.”

Stokes also said it was important to trust the recommendations of

teachers and the reasons they want to use the novels.

School board member Martha Fluor agreed, saying the school board’s job

is to create policy and see that it is followed.

“I don’t believe it is my role to tell teachers what to teach or how

to teach it,” Fluor said.

Both books Leece asked to be removed were slated for junior and senior

literature classes at Newport Harbor High.

Allende has won numerous international writing awards, including a

1996 Critics’ Choice Award in the U.S., and Guterson’s novel won the 1995

PEN/Faulkner Award.

Of the other three books the board will vote on, only one was a novel,

“French Lieutenant’s Woman,” by John Fowles, also planned for a junior

literature class.

The others are a sociology textbook and a Lions Club International and

Quest International book on fighting peer pressure called “Changes and

Challenges, Becoming the Best You Can Be.”

Most board members had no issue with these books, either.

This is not the first time Leece has voted against the use of books or

asked that a book be removed. In the past, she has objected to profanity

and science textbook presentations of evolution as fact instead of

theory.