Lawrence Hill wrote one of the bestselling and most-popular Canadian novels of all time; but what does he do for an encore? Hill, who will be in Edmonton this coming Tuesday (4/17/12) to deliver the University of Alberta’s annual Henry Kreisel lecture, knows how to follow up a smash...
Just two days before Deborah Merrick, Branch Manager at Merritt Library in British Columbia, was scheduled to burn banned books, members of the community came forward to stop her. “People came in and said they didn’t want any books burned,” Merrick said. “I didn’t have a single person come...
As orca attacks on trainers become increasingly violent, the warnings of Rose and other scientists fall on deaf ears, only to be realized with Brancheau’s death. Kirby covers the media backlash, the eyewitnesses who come forward to refute SeaWorld’s PR spin, and the groundbreaking OSHA case that challenged the...
The wit of cartoonists like Tom Toles, Mike Thompson, and the widely-popular Doonesbury strip by Gary Trudeau have amused and engaged readers for decades with their humorous take on the issues and subjects of the day, often poking fun at both sides of the debates. Doonesbury is well known...
Referred to as “Watergate at the high school level” by attendees of the National Council of Teachers of English during a 1975 convention, at its core The Chocolate War (1974) is a brilliantly-crafted novel that focuses on the issues of conformity and the use of coercion to enforce cultural norms. A New...
March is National Reading and Grammar Month here in the United States. It is built around the birthday of Dr. Seuss, as March 2 is honored with a National Read Across America Day. Libraries and schools from coast to coast held reading parties and celebrated the written word; but...
Being that these are the final days of Black History Month 2012, I thought it wise to share a news story that is also sadly apropos to the subject of censorship. Prison officials in Alabama have banned a book detailing how the American South established a form of de facto...
Most people are familiar with the classic saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” uttered by George Santayana. He, himself, identified as an American and wrote exclusively in English, but the famous philosopher was born in Madrid and was a lifelong Spanish citizen even...
Last week I reported that the Plymouth-Canton Schools in Michigan resolved a challenge to the book Beloved; but the same parents that objected to that title also have their torches aimed at another novel- Waterland, by Graham Swift. And so it is that Graham Swift becomes the latest casualty...
Students at the Plymouth-Canton Schools in Michigan got a crash course in politics this week. That’s because one family launched an official complaint on December 20, 2011 to have the fictional novel Beloved, by Toni Morrison, banned from the AP English curriculum due to racial themes, sexual content, and...