Fla principal broke rules by cancelling summer read of Little Brother

Cory Doctorow 6:00 am Tue Jul 22, 2014

You'll remember that my publisher sent 200 copies of Little Brother to Booker T Washington High School after the principal canceled the summer One Book/One School reading program because he was opposed to the book's "anti-authoritarian" message.

After conducting an investigation into a formal complaint from the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Escambia County School District's superintendent Malcolm Thomas has concluded that the school's principal did not follow the school's own procedure for evaluating challenges to books when he unilaterally canceled the program.

Disappointingly, the superintendent has cancelled all One School/One Book programs for the district in future. These programs are incredibly successful elsewhere, and prompt schoolwide conversations that can't be replicated any other way.

This reaction seems especially knee-jerk in light of the fact that, as far as I can tell, no parent actually complained about the One School/One Book assignment, and that the principal who did object to it had never read my book, and based his judgment solely on a few (positive!) reviews he found online.

Thomas: Policy not followed in ‘Little Brother’ dispute [Jamie Secola/Pensacola News Journal]

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