Alice McKinley, challenged again.

From an Arizona ABC affliate:

Judging from its cover, Hilary Lockhart thought her daughter's new book with a teenage girl on the front was harmless. Then she read it. 

"Shocked," was how she described her reaction.

Lockhart said the book described sex in detail and used the words "penis" and "vagina".

The daughter (a third grader), went to her mother and explained that she felt the book (a library book, not assigned) was too mature for her. And the mother agreed. And if it'd just stopped there, there wouldn't have been an issue.

But, of course, the parent in question has decided that the book isn't appropriate for any other students, either. The school has restricted checkout to only sixth grade students, but the challenger is pushing to get it banned from the school library outright, as well as adding a Parental Warning label. (I'm not sure why she wants both things. Maybe the warning labels are her back-up plan if the book doesn't get pulled?)

The thing is, some girls *do* get their periods in third grade, and even though Alice McKinley is a few years older, some girls *do* have similar concerns at a younger age -- it seems unfortunate and narrow-minded to assume that every girl will mature at the same rate as the offended parent's daughter.

ALSO: The article is a tad misleading in that it doesn't mention that Lovingly Alice is one of the prequels to the original Alice series, that in this one, Alice is in fifth grade, a friend gets her period for the first time, which gets Alice curious about human reproduction, and that the descriptions of sex come from sex ed class and from a book that she reads. That's slightly different from graphic descriptions of characters running around boinking each other -- which is how the news story made it sound.

Also, they used the phrase "fictional novel", which just makes me want to stab myself.

ETA: Here's the CBS version.