2 Guys and a Chick Set Off Loudoun Library Dispute

"If you are putting something behind a desk, you are saying something is wrong with it," said Judith Krug, director of the office for intellectual freedom at the American Library Association. "It's a degree of censorship, because they are making access to information extremely difficult."

Nikki George, a Sterling parent, said her daughter, a second-grader, tried to take the book out of her library at Forest Grove Elementary in Sterling last week and was told that she could not. She had heard the story last year, when a minister at her Unitarian Universalist church read it to a group of children during a service.

George said that the book helps teach a lesson that she wants her children to know: There are all types of families.

"We happen to be a mom and dad and a boy and a girl," she said. "But sometimes you have a grandmother and a mother, sometimes you have just a dad, sometimes you have two moms or two dads. The important thing is that it's a family of love."

Some parents and activists want to challenge Hatrick's decision and put the book back on shelves, but school system officials say there is no process to do that.

John Stevens, a school board member from Potomac, criticized those policies. Under the heading "Put The Penguins Back," he wrote on his blog that the policies, last reviewed in 1993, are "deeply flawed and led to a bad decision."

Stevens wrote that parents should determine what is appropriate for their children. "The school should not be an instrument of censorship for parents who want veto power over the judgment of other parents," he wrote.

Stevens intends to propose a new set of policies at a committee meeting March 4.

Last school year, a Loudoun parent challenged a school library book titled "Math Curse" because of a concern that it could be associated with witchcraft, said David Jones, supervisor of library media services.

A local committee recommended keeping "Math Curse" in the library. The decision was not appealed.