Eggers suggests replacing banned books in South Dakota WGN Radio 720

RAPID CITY, SD (AP) – Bestselling author Dave Egers is offering high school students in South Dakota’s second-largest city free copies of his book The Circle and copies of four books by other authors that have been removed from area schools. .

School administrations in Rapid City considered the books unsuitable for high school students and identified district copies as surpluses to be destroyed.

“The mass destruction of books by school boards is an unacceptable horror, and the free-thinking youth of South Dakota should not be exposed to it,” Egers said. “Every high school student should have unhindered access to literature, so if you’re a high school graduate in Rapid City, write to our office by email and ask for any of those titles. For each copy that the school board destroys, let’s add a new one to the local circulation. “

Valerie Breblek Sylse, director of teaching, teaching and innovation at Rapid City, told the Board of Education that teachers had requested the books and were considering using them in a new 12th grade English course.

Siles did not say why administrators object to “The Circle”, which satirizes cultures and values ​​that emerged in the age of the Internet. But she said the first concerns about one of the five books were voiced in August, according to the Rapid City Journal.

“The first question came when one of the three high school principals sent me a picture of a page in one of the books, an excerpt, and expressed concern that he didn’t want it in his classrooms,” she said Tuesday.

She said the books were ordered and shipped to a warehouse before being distributed to three district high schools. Copies of the five books in question were then listed as surplus and marked “subject to destruction”. The Education Council on Tuesday voted to postpone the decision to destroy the books to get legal advice.

Egers said Rapid City seniors can get free of any books that have been taken out of high school by emailing Amanda Ule at amanda@daveeggers.net. He said the books would be delivered to students by independent bookstores.

Other books published by the district include Imbola Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were: A Novel about a young woman from a small African village who begins a revolution against the American oil company.

Also removed is “Funny House: A Family Tragicomic,” a graphic memoir about Alison Bachdell’s difficult relationship with her late father, and Stephen Czboski’s “Privileges of Being a Wall Flower,” banned by some schools in other countries for drug and alcohol use. content.

Another book that has been deleted is Bernardine Evaristo’s Booker Prize, Girl, Woman, and Other: A Novel, which tells the story of the lives and struggles of twelve characters, many of whom are black Britons.