Not So Beloved

Beloved is not so beloved after all.

Well, at least to a core group of Livermore parents who at Tuesday's school board meeting spoke against Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The book was up for board approval as supplemental reading in the district's high school Advanced Placement literature courses.

The Board of Education approved the staff recommendation 3-2, with trustees Bill Dunlop and Kate Runyon dissenting.

Parents at the meeting said they felt the novel is inappropriate for high school students. Beloved touches on topics such as prostitution, rape and sex and uses raw language, a parent said.

"Although this is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize winning novel, I feel as though there is not enough good to outweigh the disturbing in this book," parent Kathy Adams said.

Adams has a high school sophomore. Her student is enrolled in honors classes and plans to take AP, or college level, classes.

"Forcing her to read this book or requiring her to opt out and not participate with the rest of the class in my opinion is an act of discrimination," Adams said. "This AP lit class may be a college-level class but our students are not college age. They are still minors."

Runyon said in the past few days she received about 60 e-mails from parents concerned about Morrison's novel being included in the course curriculum.

Runyon said the book is very disturbing and that she has had sleepless nights after reading it.

Other trustees said they felt the book should be a reading option for students in the college-level class. The rest of the board members in favor of the novel said the small group of senior students enrolled in the course are mature enough to read it.

Student trustees Kathryn Rambo and Jaimeson Cortez also supported the recommendation.

"It's nothing we don't already see in music or television," Cortez said.