Newport-Mesa Trustee Wants 2 Books Banned

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District Board of Education has some homework to do.

The seven members have to read “Snow Falling on Cedars,” by David Guterson, and “Of Love and Shadows,” by Isabel Allende, because Trustee Wendy Leece wants both books banned at high schools because of their sexual content.

Board members gave themselves until their Feb. 13 meeting to decide whether two advanced-placement English classes can read the books.

“We’re all getting copies,” board member Serene R. Stokes said.

Even if the board approves the books, district policy already requires teachers to send out “positive permission slips,” which inform parents that a book or film being used in class is controversial. Parents must return the form with their approval before their children can use the material.

“I believe it’s the parents’ decision” whether their children read the books, board member Dana Black said. “I have the utmost confidence that parents know the maturity level of their kids.”

Leece could not be reached for comment Thursday.

She has flagged other books in the past and at Tuesday night’s meeting voted against using “Biology: Principles and Explorations.” The book was approved over the objections of Leece and board member David Brooks.

A conservative Christian, Leece has proposed posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms. Black said that when a hearing and eye clinic for students is discussed, Leece always wants to make sure that referrals aren’t being made to Planned Parenthood.

The books were going to be on the reading list of two advanced-placement classes at Newport Harbor High School in Newport Beach, Stokes said. The bestseller “Snow Falling on Cedars” is for a 12th-grade class, and “Of Love and Shadows” is for an 11th-grade class.

“Snow Falling on Cedars,” winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, was 10th on the American Library Assn.’s list of “‘most frequently challenged” as being inappropriate for libraries in 1999. Topping the list was the Harry Potter series. Also listed were “Of Mice and Men,” by John Steinbeck, and “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker. “Of Love and Shadows” was not on the list.

“Snow Falling on Cedars” takes place on a fictional island off Washington state. It tells the story of a Japanese American man on trial for murder nine years after the end of World War II.

Black said she had read “Snow Falling on Cedars” and called it “an incredible book.”

It was made into a movie starring Ethan Hawke.

In his review in Time magazine, Pico Iyer called the book “a beautifully assured and full-bodied novel [that] becomes a tender examination of fairness and forgiveness.”

“Of Love and Shadows” was published in 1987. It tells of an upper-class journalist and the photographer son of a Marxist professor who discover a horrible crime in a Latin American country ruled by a dictatorship.

It was made into a movie starring Antonio Banderas that was released in 1996.