censorship

The Mr. likes to talk about my censorship. he jokes & gives me a hard time for censoring books I would read to my students. but it's not that i censor them, exactly. i just make them, um, more... dealable.
i don't think there are books that shouldn't be written & stuff. i don't think we should take harry potter off the shelves.

i started thinking of this post at halloween, b/c that's one time i could prove myself right. lemme give you a little background.

he makes fun of me & loves to know when i'll read Charlotte's Web to the kids each year. for anyone who knows me, i don't deal well w/ certain types of body humor, or issues. and the way i see it: the less you have to deal w/ grossed out 6 year olds who think that crap is funny, the better!
so, for those of you who haven't read this book in ages, let me enlighten you a little. Wilbur lives in a manure pile. only, in my class, he lives in a mud pile.
i don't see what the big deal is, but The Mr. sure does like to harass me about it.

mud is just as squishy, cold, and dirty as manure. but less gross. and i'm quite sure there are plenty of pigs out there who live in a mud pile. i'm just changing HIS location. (i don't say he lives in a pretty pen w/ a bed of hay).
here's the reason. picture if you will, a group of, say, 21 6 year olds. 2 of 'em are probly picking their nose by this point. how 'bout make, oh.... 14 of them boys.
now, go ahead and read: wilbur lives in a manure pile. .... "what's manure????"
do you REALLY wanna explain that to this class? do you really want 21 6 year olds saying "eeeeeewwwww grosss!!!!!!!" and then giggle b/c their teacher just taught them a fancy word for poops? I DIDN'T.

they could look it up or discuss it w/ their parents b/c i gave each of them the book for an end of the year gift.

ok. now, for the reason i thought of this post to begin with:

i had a student about 4 years ago whose mom was a little off. she came to me day 1 and told me her child wouldn't do anything, and that she's bipolar, (but they wouldn't diagnose her b/c she wasn't 7 yet) and blahblahblah all these things.

that year, i had a parapro (teacher's aide) who was pretty much opposite me, she wasn't going to censor anything... she is a gruff tellitlikeitis kinda lady who's had 2 of her own children. so, i guess she just said the same things to the students that she'd say to her own. i would cringe when she would say "hiney". me? i always said "bottom". in a world where "stupid" & "shut-up" are bad words (both the S-word, mind you) i'm fairly confident that "bottom" is probably the word they're used to at home.

anyhow....
there is a series of books about a character named Froggy. It always has some repetition in each of the books, and they're pretty cute. tho' slightly inappropriate at times, but i didn't censor the Froggy Gets Dressed, where at the end of the book, he stands there naked and blushing. (giggle giggle.... ).

i didn't own the halloween book. but Mrs. C did. and she read it to the kids, and they loved it. oh how they loved the chorus:

trick or treat, smell my feet

give me something good to eat [that woulda been where i stopped]

if you don't, i don't care

i'll show you my underwear!

?? leave it to that one student's mom to write me a pretty rough note demanding to know why we would teach her child that song. it took some clearing up, i tellya.

need i say more????

so, sometimes, censorship just saves time and energy!