Parkway Books with Parental Concern

The following are books being read by students in the Parkway School District that are of concern to middle and high school parents. Books on this list have been shared by parents
due to their graphic nature, sexual content, language, violence and/or other subject matter they feel does not uphold Parkways high standard of quality education. If you feel your
child is reading inappropriate literature, contact the teacher, counselor and principal to express your concerns and request its removal. Do you know of additional books with
inappropriate content at Parkway? Tell us by contacting Info@ProtectParkwayStudents.org.

Middle & High School Books

Book Title
& Author

Where it
is used

The
Absolutely
True Story of
a Part Time
Indian by
Sherman
Alexie

PSHS 10th
Grade
PWHS 9th
Grade

Theme

Excerpts
PARENT COMMENT
Note pages 25-26, 95-97, 190, 202-203, 225. Junior's conversations and narrative are laden with sexual discussions and
insinuations. For example, he lusts after his friend Penelope and gets an erection when a teacher hugs him.
DIRECT QUOTES
Page 25-26: I spend hours in the bathroom with a magazine that has one thousand pictures of naked movie stars: Naked
woman + right hand = happy happy joy joy. Yep, thats right, I admit that I masturbate. Im proud of it. Im good at. Im
ambidextrous. If there were a Professional Masturbators League, Id get drafted number one and make millions of dollars. And
maybe youre thinking, Well, you really shouldnt be talking about masturbation in public. Well, tough, Im going to talk about
it because EVERYBODY does it. And EVERYBODY likes it. And if God hadnt wanted us to masturbate, then God wouldnt
have given us thumbs.
Page 95-97: Figurative use of the word boner ([Y]ou should also read and draw because really good books and cartoons
give you a boner. I am rock hard . . . When I say boner, I really mean joy. . .)
Page 136: Vague reference to adults having sex ([Y]our mother helped me get a drink from the water fountain last night, if you
know what I mean.)
Page 172: Reference to masturbation (grief...When you feel so helpless and stupid that you think nothing will ever be right
again, and your macaroni and cheese tastes like sawdust, and you cant even jerk off because it seems like too much
trouble.)
Page 173: Following his fathers best friends death: I was mad at God; I was mad at Jesus. They were mocking me, so I
mocked them.
Page 190: Mildly sexual reference and use of the word boner (I waved at her; she blew me a kiss. Great, now I was going to
have to play the game with a boner. Ha-ha, just kidding.)

Beloved
by Toni
Morrison

Bluest Eyes
by Toni
Morrison

PNHS 11th
Grade AP
class
PSHS 11th
Grade Honors
class

PCHS
(Principal pulled
when parent spoke
up)

The many ways in

which sex can be
used as violence in
relationships that
lack any balance of
power

Pedophilia
from the
sympathetic
perspective of the
pedophile

Page 202-3: Miss Warren was, like fifty years old, but she was pretty hot. . . . So I sort of, er, physically reacted to her hug.
Page 217: Says he is in the tribe of chronic masturbators (He is also in the tribes of bookworms, cartoonists, beloved sons,
and small-town kids).
Page 225: Sexual reference (Im not a tree fag . . . I stick my dick in the girl trees . . .)
REVIEW
Source: www.lotsofessays.com. Notably, however, all such allusions are to cases of sexual violence or sexual exploitation rather
than references to romantic intimacy. Still, the first assault retold in the novel is that of the two boys who cruelly mock Sethe's
maternal associations of nursing by treating her as an animal to be milked (Barnett, 420; Morrison, 86). The novel refers several
times to the incident in which the two "mossy-toothed" boys (Morrison, 89) hold Sethe down and suck her breast milk. In so doing,
the boys have sexualized and debased Sethe's maternity, degrading the intimacy usually associated with maternal nursing. Thus,
Morrison is demonstrating the innumerable ways in which sex can be used as violence in relationships that lack any balance of
power. All of the incidents of rape in Beloved frame Sethe's explanation for killing her baby daughter.
DIRECT QUOTES
A year of yearning, when rape seemed the solitary gift of life. All in their twenties, minus women, fucking cows, dreaming of
rape, thrashing on pallets, rubbing their thighs and waiting for the new girl And the Sweet Home men abused cows while
they waited for her.
Nothing could be as good as the sex with her Paul D had been imagining off and on for twenty five years.The jump, thought
Paul D, from a calf to a girl wasnt all that mightyIt had been hard, hard, hard sitting there as erect as dogs, watching corn
stalks dance at noon.
It explained how he had come to be a rag doll picked up and put back down anywhere any time by a girl young enough to
be his daughter. Fucking her when he was convinced he didnt want to. Whenever she turned her behind up, the calves of his
youth (was that it?) cracked his resolve.A lowdown something that looked like a sweet young girl and fucking her or not was
not the point, it was not being able to stay or go where he wished
REVIEW
Source: www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/22/pedophilia-incest-and-graphic-sex-excerpts-from-a-common-core-reading-list-bookfor-11th-graders-that... Those six graphic excerpts cover incest, rape and pedophilia. In her research on the book in question,
[reporter] Macey France also exposes some pretty shocking support for those topics, from the author herself: In fact, the author of
the book, Morrison, says that she wanted the reader to feel as though they are a co-conspirator with the rapist. She took pains to
make sure she never portrayed the actions as wrong in order to show how everyone has their own problems. She even goes as far
as to describe the pedophilia, rape and incest friendly, innocent, and tender. Its no wonder that this book is in the top 10 list of
most contested books in the country.
DIRECT QUOTES
Pages 162-163: A bolt of desire ran down his genitalsand softening the lips of his anus. . . . He wanted to fuck her
tenderly. But the tenderness would not hold. The tightness of her vagina was more than he could bear. His soul seemed to slip
down his guts and fly out into her, and the gigantic thrust he made into her then provoked the only sound she made. Removing
himself from her was so painful to him he cut it short and snatched his genitals out of the dry harbor of her vagina. She
appeared to have fainted.
Page 174: He further limited his interests to little girls. They were usually manageable . . . His sexuality was anything but
lewd; his patronage of little girls smacked of innocence and was associated in his mind with cleanliness. And later, this same
pedophile notes, I work only through the Lord. He sometimes uses me to help people.
Page 181: The little girls are the only things Ill miss. Do you know that when I touched their sturdy little t*** and bit themjust
a littleI felt I was being friendly?If Id been hurting them, would they have come back? . . . theyd eat ice cream with their
legs open while I played with them. It was like a party.

Protect Parkway Students (May 2016)

Chinese
Cinderella by
Adeline Yen
Mah
In Cold Blood
by Truman
Capote
Devil in the
White City:
Murder,
Magic, and
Madness at
the Fair That
Changed
America by
Erik Larson
Dreaming In
Cuban by
Cristina Garcia

PWMS Spring
2016

PNHS 9th
Grade

PNHS AP
World History,
10th Grade

Serial killers
seducing and killing
women with cold
precision

Note: Book of
concern from
other school
districts.

Fist Stick
Knife Gun: A
Personal
History of
Violence

PSMS (?)

Goes into great

detail about the
violence

Pages 84-85: He must enter her surreptitiously, lifting the hem of her nightgown only to her navel. He must rest his weight on
his elbows when they make love, to avoid hurting her breastsWhen she senses some spasm about to grip him, she will
make rapid movements with her hips, press her fingernails into his back, suck in her breath, and pretend she is having an
orgasm. She might wonder again, for the six hundredth time, what it would be like to have that feeling while her husbands
penis is inside her.
Pages 130-131: Then he will lean his head down and bite my t** . . . I want him to put his hand between my legs, I want him
to open them for me. . . I stretch my legs open, and he is on top of meHe would die rather than take his thing out of me. Of
me. I take my fingers out of his and put my hands on his behind
Pages 148-149: With a violence born of total helplessness, he pulled her dress up, lowered his trousers and underwear. I
said get on wid it. Anmake it good, n*****, Come on c***. Faster. You aint doing nothing for her. He almost wished he could
do ithard, long, and painfully, he hated her so much.
REVIEW
Source: theguardian.com. Chinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah is a heartbreaking true story about an unloved daughter. She
suffered pain after pain but never showed it. She was always top in her class. Some bullied her and some liked her, but her mother
despised her and said she had dirty blood. All her siblings bullied her. They said she was bad luck and it was her fault that their first
mother died.
PARENT COMMENT
Discusses a familys murder in the basement. One perpetrator is short. When the parents freshman child read this book, the
student over-identifiedwith the perpetrator because he/she was short as well.
REVIEW (AMAZON)
Author Erik Larson imbues the incredible events surrounding the 1893 Chicago World's Fair with such drama that readers may find
themselves checking the book's categorization to be sure that The Devil in the White City is not, in fact, a highly imaginative novel.
Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a
serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor.

DIRECT QUOTES
Hugo and Felicia stripped in their room, dissolving easily into one another, and made love against the whitewashed walls.
Hugo bit Felicias breast and left purplish bands of bruises on her upper thighs. He knelt before her in the tub and massaged
black Spanish soap between her legs. He entered her repeatedly from behind.
Felicia learned what pleased him. She tied his arms above his head with their underclothing and slapping him sharply when
he asked.
Youre my bitch, Hugo said, groaning.
In the morning he left, promising to return in the summer.
DESCRIPTION (AMAZON)
Geoffrey Canada was a small, vulnerable, scared boy growing up in the South Bronx. Canada's world was one where "sidewalk"
boys learned the codes of the block and were ranked through the rituals of fist, stick, and knife. Then the streets changed, and the
stakes got even higher. In this candid and riveting memoir, Canada relives a childhood in which violence stalked every street
corner. "If you wonder how a fourteen-year-old can shoot another child his own age in the head and then go home to dinner,"
Canada writes, "you need to know you don't get there in a day, or week, or month. It takes years of preparation to be willing to
commit murder, to be willing to kill or die for a corner, a color, or a leather jacket."

Protect Parkway Students (May 2016)

By Geoffrey
Canada
God of Small
Things by
Arundhati Roy

A Good Man
is Hard to
Find by
Author

PWHS 10th
Honors
English

PNHS 9th
Grade

Extreme sensual
description of
incestual sexual
intercourse as a
way of rebelling
against cultural
rules such as the
Indian caste system

Grandmother is
religious and
extremely selfish

The
Handmaids
Tale by
Margaret
Atwood

PNHS

Extreme and explicit

sexual content
mixed with violence

I Know Why
the Caged
Bird Sings by
Maya Angelou

PNHS 9th
Grade ELA

It is said to express
the struggle to
become free from
racism & sexism but
is filled with

PARENT COMMENTS
Topics include alcoholism, abuse, incest, depression, dysfunction and depravity, using words, "shit," "bitch," and "cunt".
Pornographic scene in the last chapter of the book.
DIRECT QUOTES
Pages 316-317: She unbuttoned her shirt. They stood there. Her nut-brown breasts (that wouldnt support a toothbrush)
against his smooth ebony chest
Page 318: She slid further down, introducing herself to the rest of him. His neck. His nipples. His chocolate stomach She
pressed the heat of his erection against her eyelids. She tasted him, salty, in her mouth She felt her wetness slipping on his
skin. He took her nipple in his mouth and cradled her other breast in his callused palm At the moment that she guided him
into her, she caught a passing glimpse of his youth, his youngness, the wonder in his eyes at the secret he had unearthed and
she smiled down at him as though he was her child.
REVIEW
Source: www.shmoop.com. Whenever something runs up against the grandmother's will, she tries to have it her way. Notice that
she never does this directly or confrontationally, though. Her style is always a bit more subtle Although she talks about Jesus a
lot with The Misfit, the grandmother certainly doesn't seem to be deeply religious. she probably does believe that "if you would
pray, Jesus would help you" (118), as she tells The Misfit. According to her notions, a respectable lady should believe in a merciful
God. But her faith doesn't seem to run very deep. she seems to be a petty, superficial, and somewhat selfish woman.
BLOGGER REVIEW
Even while her whole family is taking to be murdered, she is trying to save only herself. Being selfish isn't a normal trait in a
grandmother making that a misfit action.
DIRECT QUOTES
Above me, towards the head of the bed, Serena Joy is arranged, outspread. Her legs are apart, I lie between them, my head
on her stomach, her pubic bone under the base of my skull, her thighs on either side of me. She too is fully clothed.
.My red skirt is hitched up to my waist, though no higher. Below it the Commander is fucking. What he is fucking is the
lower part of my body. I do not say making love, because this is not what he is doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate,
because it would imply two people, and only one is involved. Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I havent
signed up for.
Serena Joy grips my hands as if it is she, not I whos being fucked, as if she finds it neither pleasurable or painful, and the
Commander fucks, with a regular two-four marching stroke, on and on like a tap dripping. He is preoccupied, like a man
humming to himself in the shower without knowing hes humming.
.Theres impatience in his rhythm now. But isnt this everyones wet dream, two women at once? They used to say that.
Exciting, they used to say.
Sometimes the movie she showed would be an old porno film, from the seventies or eighties. Women kneeling, sucking
penises or guns, women tied up or chained or with dog collars around their necks, women hanging from trees, or upside-down,
naked, with their legs held apart, women being raped, beaten up, killed. Once we had to watch a woman being slowly cut into
pieces, her fingers and breasts snipped with garden shears, her stomach slit open and her intestines pulled out.
DIRECT QUOTES
Page 78: His legs were squeezing my waist. Pull down your drawers. I hesitated We was just playing before. He released
me enough to snatch down my bloomers and then he dragged me closer to him. Turning the radio up loud, too loud, he said,
If you scream, Im gonna kill you. And if you tell, Im gonna kill Bailey. Then there was the pain. A breaking and entering
when even the senses are torn apart. The act of rape on an eight-year-old body is a matter of the needle giving because the

Protect Parkway Students (May 2016)

hopelessness and
explicit descriptions
of child rape

Lockdown:
Escape from
Furnace 1 by
Alexander
Gordon Smith
Night by Eli
Wiesel

camel cant. The child gives, because the body can, and the mind of the violator cannot. I thought I had died I woke up in a
white-walled world, and it had to be heaven. But Mr. Freeman was there and he was washing me
1st page of Chapter 12: Ritie, come here. I didnt think about the holding time until I got close to him. His pants were open
and his thing was standing out of his britches by itself. No, sir, Mr. Freeman. I started to back away. I didnt want to touch
that mushy-hard thing again, and I didnt need him to hold me any more. He grabbed my arm and pulled me between his legs.
His face was still and looked kind, but he didnt smile or blink his eyes. Nothing. He did nothing, except reach his left hand
around to turn on the radio without even looking at it. He said, Now this aint gonna hurt you much. You liked it before,
didnt you?
PARENT COMMENT
My dad read and said was full of incredible violence and didn't think it was appropriate in any way.

Note: Book of
concern from
other school
districts.

Violence

PNHS 10th
Grade
PWHS 10th
Grade
PSHS 9th
Grade
PNHS

Extreme detail
about the brutal
violence of the Nazi
soldiers; feeling of
hopelessness

DIRECT QUOTES
Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and
bluish. But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing..That night, the soup tasted of corpses.
Infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for the machine guns.

Explicit sexual
content

For mature
audience. Violent

REVIEW
Source: www.jandysbooks.com. Chief Little Wolf of the Cheyenne Indian nation met with President Grant with a proposition for
future peace in the United States by having the President provide 1,000 white wives to the Cheyenne. All babies born to these
women would belong to the white race. Thus the two tribes of peoples would merge peacefully. May Dodd, a Chicago socialite
whose father had her locked in an insane asylum, is one of the women in the first group of volunteers for the grand social
experiment. May keeps a journal. The women are a mixed group a former slave, a tipsy Southern Belle, a pair of Irish twins who
were in jail for petty thievery and prostitution, a timid secretary, a righteous evangelizing woman, May herself, and more.
Strong indecent language
Suggestive dialogue or situations
Strong sexual content - somewhat explicit sex
Explicit sexual content - very explicit to erotica
Non-graphic violence, some gore
Graphic violence - explicit scenes of gore or violent acts
AMAZON DESCRIPTION
I bought this book to read because it was suggested reading for my 13 year old nephew. I'm not sure it was appropriate for him to
read. At certain points it was very graphic language. From https://geekyproverbs31.wordpress.com It was free of any profanity or
sex, which was a major plus for me. Since it follows Yanek into each concentration camp, it can be very violent at times. I would
recommend this book for a mature, young reader who would like to learn more about the Holocaust.
PARENT COMMENT
Vonnegut authored Slaughterhouse-Five, Cats Cradle, When It All Went to Hell. One mom says he really messes with your
mind.
DIRECT QUOTES
I wanted to ruin it. Ruin the glove I sloshed gasoline on the glovehe pulled his hand out of the glove. Cradled it against his
chestI had the lighterI pitched it at the birthday baseball glove. It took Bobby three days to die. After a year apart, we
were back..Hot and heavy. She wanted sex. I wanted sex.

One
Thousand
White
Women: The
Journals of
May Dodd by
Jim Fergus

Prisoner B3087 by Alan

Gratz

PWMS Spring
2016

Author Kurt
Vonnegut

PNHS

Right Behind
You by Gail
Giles

PSHS 9th
Grade

Extreme violence
without remorse

Protect Parkway Students (May 2016)

Unwind by
Neal
Shusterman

PWMS Spring
2016

Warriors
Don't Cry by
Melba Pattillo
Beals

PWMS Spring
2016

Intense visualization

We Were
Liars by
E.Lockhart

PWMS

Dark imagery to
describe feelings

Z for
Zachariah by
Robert C.
OBrien

PWMS Spring
2016

REVIEW
Source: www.pluggedin.com. After the "Heartland War," a civil battle between those who believed in abortion on demand and
those considered to be pro-life, a set of constitutional amendments was passed called "The Bill of Life." These amendments stated
that from the moment of conception, human life couldn't be ended. But, from the age of 13 until a child reaches 18, a parent or
guardian may choose to retroactively abort their child. This process is called "unwinding." The child is not technically killed, as
every useful piece of its body is recycled into the bodies of other people in need.
AMAZON REVIEW
Graphic attempted rape happens in the first two chapters. Its heart wrenching to read of the actual daily brutality and torture of
kicks, slaps , spitting, sprays and verbal abuse that these children suffered. The events that occurred at this time made an
unerasable mark of violent racist psyche on the multi-colored design that composes America's people. This book is also emotional
because it is easy to see that those in power could have made the transition to integration a much smoother and less painful step
into an inevitably better social structure. This was a hard read. I had to put it down several times because the visualization was just
too intense, the bigotry and viciousness too unadulterated.
REVIEW
Source: www.pluggedin.com At some point, late in the summer, Cadence recalls going for a swim in the evening, without her
cousins or Gat. Her mother found her later on the beach, shivering and numb. Cadence is taken to the hospital, suffering from
hypothermia, respiratory problems and some kind of head injury that didnt show up on the brain scans. She becomes depressed
after her mother takes her back home to Vermont and Gat doesnt contact her to find out how she is recuperating. Her cousins do
not answer her emails either. Although there is little actual violence in the novel, Cadence often uses horrific images to describe
how she feels. When her father leaves, Cadence says that he pulled out a gun and shot her in the chest. She says her heart fell out
onto the lawn while blood gushed from the hole. She also repeatedly talks about her cuts bleeding and only Gat bandages them. It
is unclear whether she actually cuts her wrists or whether this is another metaphor for her pain. As Cadences memories return,
she imagines the horrific death the dogs, Mirren, Johnny and Gat must have experienced as the fire consumed them. She thinks
about their lungs filling with smoke and their skin burning.
AMAZON REVIEW
OK, to be fair, I *had* to read this, and I cannot say I was thrilled at the premise of a sci-fi read, but I chugged through it. Barely. I
was forced to write an assignment on character development. Please, if I missed Ann's 'change', do notify me. I laughed originally
when I got the assignment, this book makes cardboard look meaty. Ann is confusing, and there is no real punch in her voice. There
isn't even mild angst. There was no description save a few, brief sentences about the war, which is disappointing to say the least,
and shows just how shallow the author's depth was on the subject. I'm not sure how O'Brien wanted to portray the antagonist, but I
am fairly sure not as one-sidedly evil as it came out. He also tries to rape the main character. Nice. Yup, this is the crap they are
forcing us to read in Middle School. And you thought Harry Potter deserved the ax off library shelves... Ann should've shot Loomis
off the bat. Then herself, and ended this monstrosity.

Protect Parkway Students (May 2016)