Freedom to Read

2007—The Council of Turkish Canadians objected to the inclusion of this book on a recommended reading list for a proposed Grade 11 history course on genocide in Toronto public schools. The book describes the deaths of more than a million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire early in the twentieth century as genocide.

Update—In April 2008, a committee of the Toronto District School Board decided to remove the book from the reading list because “a concern was raised regarding [its] appropriateness. . . . The Committee determined this was a far from scrupulous text and should not be on a History course although it might be included in a course on the social psychology of genocide because of her [Coloroso’s] posited thesis that genocide is merely the extreme extension of bullying.” The decision to remove Extraordinary Evil, however, prompted new protests from the book’s defenders, including Canadian publishers, the Writers’ Union of Canada, the Book and Periodical Council and holocaust scholar Gerald Caplan. In June, the school board reversed its decision, putting the book back onto the recommended reading list. But this decision prompted the Turkish Embassy in Canada to protest to Premier Dalton McGuinty and Ontario’s Ministry of Education.

2006—In Ontario, the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) urged public school boards to deny access to this children’s non-fiction book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to students in the elementary grades. The CJC said that Ellis had provided a flawed historical introduction to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The CJC also said that some children in the book portrayed Israeli soldiers as brutal, expressed ethnic hatred and glorified suicide bombing. The effect on young student readers, the CJC said, was “toxic.”

Update—Although the Ontario Library Association (OLA) had recommended Three Wishes to schools as part of its acclaimed Silver Birch reading program, and although schoolchildren were not required to read the book, at least five school boards in Ontario set restrictions on the text.

1991—This autobiographical account of child abuse in the Mount Cashel orphanage and foster homes in the St. John’s (NF) area was banned in the St. John’s region. The provincial government argued that the book should not be sold during the trials of the eight Christian Brothers charged with abusing boys at Mount Cashel.

Update—At first, the province extended the ban pending proceedings against a foster mother’s court appearance in December 1992. The ban was extended even though the government had released the report of the commission that investigated the Mount Cashel affair. However, the book is now available in Newfoundland and Labrador.