With all eyes on me I came up with the best answer I could on the spot and I told him that this was Canada, and we don’t kill Jews here, so we are safe on the bus. That trip would not have made much of an impression in my memory if the sighs of relief I heard were only my children’s. No doubt I had been watching far too much news coverage in front of the youngest and made a mental note to ease up around the children.
My little trip down memory lane was triggered by this article by the controversy of children’s book entitled Three Wishes that is geared to four 9-11 year olds that is currently on the Silver Birch Reading Program. The Canadian Jewish Congress is asking that other Ontario boards to do the same as the book deals with the Israeli-Arab Palestinian conflict. The Toronto Star carried this report:
The York Region District School Board has already pulled the non-fiction book by award-winning Simcoe writer Deborah Ellis from its Silver Birch selection list, and the congress is asking all English-language boards across the province to do the same. Three Wishes hasn't been banished from the York board's libraries, but a memo went out to teachers and librarians saying that the book, which features interviews with children on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is not appropriate for children in Grades 4 to 6, especially when read without the context that teachers might provide in the classroom. The children Ellis interviews in the book discuss suicide bombings, anti-Semitism, guns and soldiers.
In one interview a 12-year-old Palestinian girl talks about how she would have made her sister a special breakfast if she'd known she was going to blow herself up that day. "She is a martyr and is now in paradise ... I would like to join her there ... I don't think it would hurt if I blew myself up," says the girl.
"Our position is we don't ban books," said York superintendent Lyn Sharratt in an interview from England, where she is attending a conference. "We felt it was inappropriate in terms of age classification. The Silver Birch is for students of junior grade levels and we felt it would be more appropriate to be used in Grade 7 to 12, with teacher direction."
The board reviewed the book after a teacher and superintendent expressed concerns.
Normally Silver Birch books aren't reviewed in the same way as texts used in the classroom. They're usually promoted in school libraries and read outside class to encourage recreational reading. Children must read half the selections to be allowed to vote on the award winner. (There's no cash prize to the author.) A Feb. 8 letter to the library association from the congress outlines 17 passages from Three Wishes that it suggests are inappropriate because the book doesn't provide enough context or detail.
The letter says the book portrays Israelis as "brutal occupiers," and Palestinians as "murderers who are so intent on killing Israelis that they are prepared to blow themselves to shreds." Palestinian and Israeli children in the book discuss what it means to live near borders dividing Israel and living under the surveillance of their worried parents and gun-carrying soldiers.
"Sometimes, in bringing an issue down to a level everybody can understand, you squeeze all the context and a lot of the substance out of the discussion, so what you're left with is not a discussion of the Middle East situation, what you have is a book about kids talking to other kids about how they feel," congress director Len Rudner told the Star. "This is not a question of taking the book off the shelves, although some schools may draw that conclusion themselves. This is about considering the audience and acting in a responsible fashion," he said. "What you're left with is a book where, in a fair number of instances, you have kids saying: Maybe suicide bombing is a viable alternative, or maybe it's understandable or maybe it's a career choice for me.
"It either convinces children that maybe blowing up your enemy by strapping explosive devices to yourself is not such a far-fetched thing, or it advances the message these people are crazy and people like that can't be trusted. Just imagine how those kind of messages can play themselves out in a schoolyard," said Rudner. But Larry Moore, executive director of the library association, says the congress is taking issue with statements by the children in the book rather than the work in its entirety. "The book is perfectly good for children but the adults can't cope with it," he said. It does not incite violence but rather encourages children to talk to one another, he added.
Silver Birch books are selected from about 200 Canadian titles a year by a committee of about 20 public and school librarians who are looking for topical, entertaining and educational reads. Students pick their favourite books after their schools hold a voting day in early May. Because the Silver Birch Award is designed for three grade levels, selections often appeal to the younger or older range of recommended readers, said Moore, who added that all reviews of Three Wishes have been good. "We have yet to find a review that doesn't support it. They're all pegging it as Grade 5 and up," he said.
The language of the book may very be easy for 9-11 year olds to grasp but I fail to comprehend why this is suitable subject material for a 9-11 year old to read. Whatever happened for 9-11 year olds reading Charlotte’s Web, Redwall, James and the Giant Peach, Harry Potter, Sideways, Chronicles of Narnia or even Bill Nye the Science Guy? I see no virtue in a 9-11 year old child learning that out there in the world there are other children their age who perceive that the cold blooded murder of innocents is desirable or a way to be guaranteed a place in heaven.
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