David*Macinnis*Gill.com

I read this on

david­lubar

‘s blog. It’s impor­tant enough to pass along. My other post is about the peo­ple I’m thank­ful for, but first, I’d like to say I’m thank­ful that Ritchie Part­ing­ton had the nerve to ask a prin­ci­pal to actu­ally read.  If any­one has any­more details about this case, please comment.

QUOTE:
A day after inform­ing the Dis­trict Super­in­ten­dent that he saw no rea­son to meet with the prin­ci­pal who had banned a highly-regarded children’s book — until the prin­ci­pal had actu­ally read the book that he had banned — Sebastopol librar­ian and author Richie Part­ing­ton was fired from his posi­tion as Library Con­sul­tant to the Belle­vue Union School Dis­trict in Santa Rosa, California.

Part­ing­ton, a part-time mem­ber of the fac­ulty in San Jose State University’s School of Library and Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence, and author of the pop­u­lar children’s book review web­site Richie’s Picks, expressed his shock and dis­ap­point­ment over what had hap­pened. “Last week I was book­talk­ing at Dis­trict schools and lit­er­ally had stu­dents fight­ing over who would first get to read the books I was pre­sent­ing. The admin­is­tra­tors must have thought that there must be some­thing wrong with the books if the stu­dents wanted to read them so badly.”

The book in ques­tion is, iron­i­cally, about a young hero in a soci­ety where nobody reads any­more. Rod­man Philbrick’s The Last Book in the Uni­verse has been selected for inclu­sion by the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion on its list for ado­les­cents of “100 Best of the Best Books for the 21st Cen­tury” and has been sub­se­quently nom­i­nated for numer­ous state children’s book awards.

Part­ing­ton, who is active in the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion, had recently been appointed as one of fif­teen librar­i­ans in the coun­try to serve on the com­mit­tee that will read thou­sands of new 2008 pic­ture books and deter­mine the win­ner of the ALA’s pres­ti­gious Calde­cott Medal.

Part­ing­ton is best known for his reviews of soon-to-be-published books for chil­dren and ado­les­cents that are reg­u­larly dis­trib­uted to more than 8,000 librar­i­ans, teach­ers, and pub­lish­ing exec­u­tives world­wide and archived on his web­site at http://richiespicks.com. He is also known for hav­ing ini­ti­ated in Sebastopol the nation’s first No Name-Calling Week, which was based upon events in a children’s book by James Howe titled The Mis­fits. No Name-Calling Week sub­se­quently became a nationally-commemorated annual event with nearly half a mil­lion school chil­dren across Amer­ica par­tic­i­pat­ing in last year’s obser­vance. (See http://www.nonamecallingweek.org/cgi-bin/iowa/home.html)

Richie Part­ing­ton, MLIS
Richie’s Picks http://richiespicks.com
Mod­er­a­tor, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_school_lit/
Bud­Not­Buddy [at] aol [dot] com
http://www.myspace.com/richiespicks