YA Novels Prompt Police Objections to Summer Reading List in South Carolina vis Publishing Perspectives

YA Novels Prompt Police Objections to Summer Reading List in South Carolina

Publishing Perspectives: 7.02.2018 by Porter Anderson

School Has the Books Under ‘Reconsideration’

 The Hate U Give    All American Boys

In South Carolina’s Charleston County, complaints from the Fraternal Order of Police Tri-County Lodge #3 have placed two of four books recommended for high school summer reading into a process of reconsideration that could lead to the books being taken off the reading list.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) on Thursday (June 28) issued a notice about the challenge to the reading list. As Patricia Mastricolo writes, “The school is reconsidering the books’ inclusion in the curriculum following an official request for reconsideration.”

The Hate U Give (HarperCollins, 2017) by Angie Thomas and All American Boys (Simon & Schuster, 2015) by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely both have stories that include police brutality and racism as themes, and both are among the most highly acclaimed bestsellers in their sector of recent years.

All American Boys was given the 2016 Coretta Scott King Author Honor and Walter Dean Myers Award for children’s literature. School Library Journal named the book “a must-have for all collections,” and the critics there wrote, “Reynolds and Kiely’s collaborative effort deftly explores the aftermath of police brutality, addressing the fear, confusion, and anger that affects entire communities. Diverse perspectives are presented in a manner that feels organic to the narrative, further emphasizing the tension created when privilege and racism cannot be ignored.”

And Thomas’s The Hate U Give—in which a 16-year-old sees her childhood best friend fatally shot by a police officer—has been showered with accolades, including a longlisting for the National Book Award, the Coretta Scott King Author Honor, the William C. Morris Award, the Printz Honor. At this writing, it’s spent 69 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list for Young Adult Hardcover books. And it stands at No. 1 in the Amazon Kindle Store for Teen & YA literature and fiction categories of violence and prejudice in social and family issues.  READ MORE >>