Brave New World Removed from
Alabama High School Library
Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World has been removed from the Foley (Ala.) High School Library after a parent complained that the novel’s characters showed contempt for religion, marriage, and the family, according to the September 21 Mobile Register. The novel, first published in 1932, portrays life in a totalitarian state 600 years in the future.
“I don’t think too much of assigning this to high school students,” said the parent, Kathleen Stone. The book, which is on county and national reading lists for advanced-placement high school students, was assigned reading in one 11th-grade English class at the school. School officials emphasized that the book was not banned, but was removed pending review.
Brave New World ranks fifth on a Modern Library list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century—and 54th on the American Library Association’s list of 100 books that drew the most complaints in the 1990s.
This year’s Banned Books Week, September 23–30, cosponsored by ALA and five other organizations, features a September 25 ceremony at the Library of Congress in Washington at which awards will be presented to Banned Books Week “heroes”—individuals, both children and adults, who took a stand in defense of the principle of freedom to read.
Posted September 25, 2000.
|
