Gay penguin story again on list of disputed library books

A picture book about two male penguins raising a baby penguin has again made a list of books to have received the most complaints from library users. And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell came third in a list of titles the American Library Association said had received the most complaints from parents and educators.



The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian came top of the list. Sherman Alexie's tale of a young Native American at a predominately white high school was first published in 2007. Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, a graphic novel about a young Iranian girl growing up in the years after the country's Islamic Revolution, is ranked second.

The list of titles, all of whom have been the subject of a formal written complaint, filed with a library or school, requesting they be removed, is compiled annually by the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom. The alleged "cultural insensitivity" of Alexie's novel is one of the reasons cited in complaints calling for its removal. And Tango Makes Three, based on a real-life story of two male penguins who hatched an egg at the New York Zoo, is accused of promoting a homosexual agenda.


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Other titles on the list include Toni Morrison's debut novel The Bluest Eye, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and A Stolen Life, a kidnapping memoir by Jaycee Dugard. The remaining books cited by the library association were Robie Harris' It's Perfectly Normal, Saga by Brian Vaughan and Fiona Staples, Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Raina Telgemeier's Drama. The ALA counted 311 challenges in 2014, roughly the same as were lodged in 2013.