[LM_NET] HS Target: HS vs Adult Fiction in the HS Library and do any schools have a permission form

["Fitzgerald, Joy" <Joy.Fitzgerald@VERNONCT.ORG>]

Hi,
 
          I need the expertise of other High School Librarians.  And if you have 
read any of the titles, let me know what you think.  I haven't had time to read 
them.  I don't like to censor but a discussion with another teacher puts this more 
in the appropriate selection of materials for a High School Library. 
 
          Our school has a reading club which has been choosing books which are not 
titles we have had on the bookshelves.  Many are fairly new adult best seller 
titles that they let the students choose as a group.
 
          Now they wish to set up a BOOK CLUB bookshelf in the Library.  While 
their club reads together and discusses the books with student and adult 
participation, that is in a supervised setting.  Now, to put these books on the 
H.S. Library shelves is putting us in a precarious position.  Many are not the 
books we would normally select for a High School Library.  
 
          The book club has actually sent home parental permission forms in order 
to allow the students to read certain books.  (For example: "A Million Little 
Pieces" by James Frey or "PREP by Curtis Sittenfeld" both of which the English and 
Reading Teachers said should require permission even in the HS Library for their 
book club shelves.  Another they have read in an English Class is "WICKED" due to 
the broadway play.)   I had read Wicked and had put it in the Teacher collection 3 
or 4 years ago (before it became a broadway play).  Just glancing through A Million 
Little Pieces, I could see from the language and content that it would not 
necessarily be something I would have selected for our H.S. Library.  
 
        So, my dilemma, now is do we have a permission form or do we make it openly 
available in the Library (the Library actually had to pay for the reading club 
books and the plan originally before any titles were selected was that the books 
would come back and be available in the Library)?  
 
         Please send me a copy of a PERMISSION form if any of you have one in use.  
 
          Thank you.  
 
              Joy Fitzgerald, Librarian Media Specialist, Rockville High School, 
Vernon, CT
              joy.fitzgerald@vernonct.org