In Nancy Garden's The Year They Burned the Books, a whole town joins the argument over the new health education curriculum.Jamie Crawford, the editor of the Wilson High Telegraph, lead the student fight against what she sees as limiting her freedom of speech. Lisa Buel, of Families for Traditions Values (read homophobic, right wing, religious nuts), is the head of the movement to remove the new health texts from the schools because they talk about things other than abstinence. The even mention gay people!
This is a battle that will include everyone who lives in town of Wilson, New England written in a realistic way that will infuriate those of us who do not believe in banning books. At one point I had to put the book down because I was so made that there are people like the FTV who can make queer or questioning teen's lives hell. But the book is worth a read. It is an important issue.
Garden, Nancy. (1999). The Year the Burned the Books. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
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