The Sledding Hill -- Chris Crutcher

Ha.  Chris Crutcher wins.  If anyone tries to ban this one, they're going to look really, really bad, because they'll be trying to get rid of it because of the ideas in it.  Because, specifically, of blasphemy.

There isn't a single swear word in the book.  There's no sex, no actual violence (well hardly any--someone gets slapped).  So, yeah.  Like I said, if someone wants to get rid of it, basically, they'll be blatantly challenging intellectual freedom.

If you're a Chris Crutcher fan already, read it.  If you don't know him, read it anyway.  Since the book being challenged is one of his own, he even makes an appearance--and as you might expect, he's very self-deprecating.  The narrator is the main character's dead best friend, and so, of course, The Lovely Bones gets a nod.  A girl wears a tee-shirt that says, "Leviticus Sucks".  Eddie gets institutionalized because the adults in the town think that he thinks he's Jesus.

It's nothing like his other books.  This past year, his books have been challenged over and over--judging by this one, I'd say that he's BENT.  In a major way.  But, in true Chris Crutcher style, he doesn't turn the people that hate his books into monsters--even though some of them seem to view him as one.

I visited the Monkey yesterday, and Donna told me that no one working there has read it yet.  NO ONE THERE HAS READ IT YET.  The Monkey no longer has multiple rabid Crutcher fans on staff.  Which made me sad.  It also weirdly made me want to work the chapter book room for a few hours--enough time to sell all the copies that they had of his books. 

Being sane, I didn't do that.  But I'll put the word out here:  support Chris Crutcher and authors like him: authors that fight for intellectual freedom and against a small group of loud mouths controlling what books are taught in our schools and what books are in our libraries.