Who decides what kids can — and can’t — read?

Alex Johnson Reporter • Profile

As any author would be, Carolyn Mackler is grateful for the renewed attention her book “The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things” is getting this Christmas season. But this was not the way she wanted to get it.

Mackler writes novels for adolescent girls, what the industry calls the “young adult” market. “The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things” — an inspirational tale about overcoming body insecurities, peer pressure and family dysfunction — was one of the most highly honored books in the genre when it appeared in late 2003.

“If I had the authority, I’d make every parent read it,” said Charles I. Ecker, superintendent of schools in Carroll County, Md., “because it’s about family relations, about how parents treat a child that may not be the way they think they should be.”

Ecker doesn’t have that authority, but he does have the authority to say what books can go on the shelves in Carroll County’s public schools. A couple of months ago, he was given the chance to decide on “The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things.”

He banned it.

An agonizing choice for a respected educator
This is not your usual story about a rural school official pulling “The Catcher in the Rye” because kids shouldn’t read such trash.

Carroll County lies in an urban corridor about halfway between Washington and Baltimore, and its schools are rated among the best in Maryland. Ecker, a former two-term county executive in neighboring Howard County, has a doctorate in education administration and has served on numerous state and regional commissions in more than 40 years as an educator.

He is quick to praise a worthy book when he finds one, and he thinks teenagers can learn a lot from “The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things.”

But it “also had some foul language in it and some sexual things in it that I thought was unfortunate,” he said in an interview. “I didn't think it added to the message. I thought it took away from it.” So he overturned a committee that voted to keep the book after a parent challenged its language and sexual themes.

The book is remarkable for its realism, which Mackler, 32, who lives in New York, said is something she can’t compromise on, because the only way to reach adolescent readers is to speak to them in their own language.

Challenged books Sexual content and offensive language are the most frequent objections to the 10 most frequently challenged books of 2004: — “The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier — “Fallen Angels,” by Walter Dean Myers — “Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture,” by Michael A. Bellesiles — The Captain Underpants series, by Dav Pilkey — “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky — “What My Mother Doesn’t Know,” by Sonya Sones — “In the Night Kitchen,” by Maurice Sendak — “King & King,” by Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland — “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou — “Of Mice and Men,” by John Steinbeck Source: American Library Association

“Since this novel came out, I’ve received piles and piles of letters from teenage girls — handwritten letters — telling me that since they read ‘The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things,’ they feel better about themselves as they are,” she said in an interview. “They have stopped cutting themselves. They’ve sought help for bulimia. They’ve sought help for depression.”

So when word reached students at Winters Mill High School that “The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things” would be pulled from the libraries, they initiated a petition drive to get it back. Ecker said he is formally considering their request and expects to decide shortly after the first of the year.

Ecker said he was in a quandary. He believes in the First Amendment, he said, and “it’s a wonderful message,” but it is also a difficult one that some pupils may not be ready for.

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