aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Friday, August 31, 2007

Penguins subversive and banned

A big fan of Savion Glover, I rented Happy Feet last weekend. I have to say that after seeing the movie I better understand why he was omitted from the top tier credits. There wasn’t near enough dancing.

I read Mumble, the young dancing penguin, as a euphemism for gay. The ice breaking into the sea at the end of delightfully executed penguin ice ride and the over-fishing trawlers were wonderfully and appropriately environmentally evocative for young children. They cry out to be made into a simulator adventure at an amusement park. It made me wish my flat panel was 50” rather than 32.

In other penguin news, AP had the details this week on ”And Tango Makes Three,” the award-winning children’s book based on a true story about two male penguins who raised a baby penguin that topped the American Library Association’s annual list of works attracting the most complaints from parents, library patrons and others:

Overall, the number of “challenged” books in 2006 jumped to 546, more than 30 percent higher than the previous year’s total, 405, although still low compared to the mid-1990s, when challenges topped 750. [...]

“And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, was published in 2005 and named by the ALA as one of the year’s best children’s books. But parents and educators have complained that “Tango Makes Three” advocates homosexuality, with challenges reported in Southwick, Mass., Shiloh, Ill., and elsewhere.

The ALA defines a “challenge” as a “formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness.” For every challenge listed, about four to five go unreported, according to the library association. Krug said 30 books were actually banned last year.

Here’s some Tango backstory. And, why not? Here’s a Happy Feet trailer: