He read the book after his daughter told him about the chapter in which the twin boy is killed. He said his daughter was upset, but he declined to discuss details.
[b]In the book, Jonas is upset when he discovers infanticide. But Hanson does not think other examples in the book are as clear cut, including the ending when Jonas saves a baby and rides off into a snowstorm without warm clothes.
South Carolina school librarian Pat Scales agreed the ending is ambiguous, but she thinks the book helps students raise questions about the costs of a controlled life and better appreciate their democratic society.[/b]
Scales said the book gives students a way to talk about difficult topics already openly discussed in the media. She believes the book is best suited for middle school students, but admitted not every child will be ready for its topics at the same time.
``If we waited for every kid to be ready, we'd be the same kind of world Jonas is in,'' said Scales, the library director at the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities in Greenville, S.C.
Groups such as the National Parent-Teacher Association and the National Association of Elementary School Principals do not take positions on such issues.
However Focus on the Family, a Colorado Springs-based Christian ministry, is concerned that parents are not being allowed to decide which books are appropriate for their children.
Dick Carpenter, the group's education policy analyst, said the book's ambiguity about violence is wrong, especially at a time when some people are pushing for character education in schools.
Mary Brice, the former children's book buyer for the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, said many young adult books deal with weighty topics, something their readers crave.
For example, she said, there has been a surge in Holocaust books for teen-agers, both fiction and nonfiction, in the last 10 years. The bookstore even sells picture books for younger children on topics ranging from a homeless family that lives in an airport to the Los Angeles riots.
``It's a time when their minds are very anxious to be challenged to grow,'' she said.
AP-NY-07-05-01 0747EDT
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