Gulf High School IB student, parents object to book

Marí Mercado ranks in the top 10 of her International Baccalaureate class at Gulf High School.

The 16-year-old loves to read, hates to make B’s and works hard on all her assignments.

So when it came time to read two complex novels and write an essay on their magical realism over the summer, Marí didn’t complain. She didn’t even blink at the notion of tackling the 611 pages of Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, translated from the original Japanese.

Then she got to the passage on Page 11 that began, “She said, ‘I’m in bed. I just got out of the shower, and I’m not wearing a thing.’ Oh, great. Telephone sex.” Marí thought the text was getting iffy.

Less than half a page later, the writing had become so sexually graphic that she gave the book to her mom, Mindy, with an “Eww, gross.”

Source: St. Petersburg Times

Note: ResourceShelf senior editor Shirl Kennedy is a news researcher for the St. Petersburg Times.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 and is filed under Censorship, Education, Search News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.