Posted on May 11, 2021 at 12:00 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes may have won a Walter Award, but it won’t be taught in a Florida school district any longer.
The book is told from the perspective of a preteen boy who is fatally shot by a police officer who mistakes his toy gun for a real gun and who, as a ghost, befriends Emmett Till’s ghost and meets the (still living) daughter of the officer who killed him.
Literary Hub reports that parents hadn’t been given advance notice about the assignment, as is standard procedure, so parents were initially given the ability to opt their children out of the book assignment.
However, the local Fraternal Order of Police director rendered that point moot by writing an open letter to the school board and district parents asking — successfully — that Ghost Boys be removed altogether.
You can read pages one and two of the letter, which objects to how the book depicts police officers, online.
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Categories: Today in Books