The Johnston County School Board in North, Carolina has pulled Julia Alvarez’s coming-of-age novel, How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, from their high school curriculum because one student cried to her mom after reading about a sex scene:

Georgia Roberts’ daughter, a 15-year-old student at West Johnston High, came to her with a copy of “How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” and told her mother she was having a hard time reading the book. Mrs. Roberts encouraged her to give it a try and come back if she was still having problems with it, she said. Her daughter got about halfway through the book and brought it back to her again.

“She just came to me and she was very upset and crying because the more you go into the book, the worse it got,” she said.

Traumatizing. Let’s give the young girl something a bit more palatable than descriptions of male arousal. Something like, say. War:

The Robertses were disgusted and called the school asking for an alternate assignment and a parent-teacher conference about the reading material. School officials assigned her daughter “All Quiet On The Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque, a book centered around World War I, in place of the Alvarez novel.

When Mrs. Roberts arrived at her parent-teacher conference she was surprised to find the teacher, school principal and her daughter’s advisor all there, she said. They could not understand what she was so upset about, Mrs. Roberts said.

The school’s reason for teaching the book was that each of its scenes is a lesson, she said. Mrs. Roberts was told a pedophile scene in the book was meant to teach students about the language barrier for Latinos in America.

That’s because after the main character, who cannot speak English well, is approached by a man flaunting himself sexually, the girl had to go to the police station to tell them what happened, Mrs. Roberts said.

That does sound like a difficult situation to read about. If only it weren’t also constantly on the evening news, tabloids, commercials and Lifetime TV movies.

“I said (to the teacher), ‘Well ma’am, you can learn about language barriers at the DMV (Division of Motor Vehicles) … you can go anywhere in Johnston County and come up with a language barrier situation … It doesn’t have to be done with a man’s (private part) rising and him taking care of himself,’” Mrs. Roberts said.

(Private parts)? We think you mean penis, Mrs. Roberts. PENIS PENIS PENIS. COCK DICK SHLONG JOHNSON WANG. Penis.

Johnston Schools Ban Book, Hunts For More [Dunn Daily Record]