Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 27, 1994 TAG: 9402270016
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune
DATELINE: LYNDEN, WASH. LENGTH: Medium
About as far as you can go north and west without driving into Canada or the Pacific Ocean, Lynden is a picture-perfect community of dairy and potato farmers, cheerfully billed as a place where tourists can "Visit Holland Without a Passport."
The downtown offers a life-size Dutch windmill that doubles as a hotel and recreational vehicle park office. Shops along Front Street bustle with business, and not a blade of grass is out of place beside rows of well-tended bungalows that stretch in every direction.
Lynden is a town where stores don't open on Sundays, where you can't dance in public in the same place where you drink and, now, where they ban books.
An ugly fight this month over a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a farm community much like Lynden has torn a wide rift in this deeply religious enclave, a traditional town of 5,700 swollen by a recent influx of newcomers fleeing urban ills.
After the parent of a teen-ager complained about "stimulating and titillating" passages in Jane Smiley's "A Thousand Acres," the fictional account of an Iowa farm family, officials pulled the book from a reading list at the local high school.
Now, echoing a debate that resounds in school boards and dinner tables across the nation, townsfolk find themselves in a heated battle over parental control, family values and the desire of some to shelter children from life's unpleasant realities.
"The book didn't offend me, but it was offensive that something like this happened in our community," said Jennifer Tuor, 17, a high school senior. "There are people who are overly concerned and want to keep everything bad out of Lynden, but a lot of people got hurt."
Egbert Maas, 70, who retired in December after 12 years as Lynden's mayor, defended keeping the book out of the high school, no matter how it looks elsewhere.
"I wouldn't say we're the kind of community that bans books," Maas said. "There is an attitude among some that the school system can do what it wants. But with all the media we have, I really think there's enough exposure to this big world we're living in. Our kids don't have to read a book like that."
The dispute over "A Thousand Acres" began in teacher Carole Hanaway's advanced-placement English class at Lynden High School. Hanaway said she chose the book to help students understand Shakespeare, since it is described as a modern-day "King Lear."
The book's plot, about an Iowa farm family that disintegrates after the father divides his property among his daughters, includes incest and an extramarital affair. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1991, it was approved by Principal Ken Axelson.
Soon, however, photocopies of pages describing the affair depicted in the book were being passed around Lynden. They reportedly caused quite a stir at the local newspaper office when they came over the fax machine with no accompanying note.
Yet, even after a parent complained, the school's curriculum advisory committee of teachers, administrators and parents voted to keep the book, which some outside educators consider suitable for advanced classes.
But the protest, led by Cathy Mickels, mother of a high school student and president of a local group called the Washington Alliance of Families, gained momentum on the radio waves, in the newspaper and over the coffee shop counter.
On Feb. 7, the eve of a referendum on the school district's request for $3 million over the next two years, Axelson announced that the book was being dropped because of the controversy.
"This book has no literary value in our community right now," he said, adding that he found no other high school teaching the novel.
Nonetheless, Lynden residents narrowly voted down the tax levy, their first such rejection in 15 years, in what all agreed was a protest against the book.
The levy is set to go before voters again in April, when passions may have died down, but the debate continues over how the school chooses books. Mickels, who promotes her notion of family values on her own weekly radio show, argues that more parents are needed on the curriculum advisory board.
Axelson, for his part, now has second thoughts about having banned the book and says next time he won't bow to pressure.
"I said to my parents advisory committee, `Maybe I'm just more of a heathen about all this,' " he recalled. "And one of them said, `No, I just pull my drapes a little tighter than you do.' "
by CNB