The Banning of the Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian

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So in The Absolutely True Diary, Jr. is a freshman in high school. Now, from experience, being a freshman is hard. Upperclassmen pick on you, and it’s hard to fit in. So when he transfers to Reardan, and doesn’t fit in because he’s the only Indian, that’s a hardship that a lot of high schoolers go through. New kids go through the most troubles by far. “Man I was scared of those Reardan kids…..” (Alexie, Sherman. 51). As an Indian, Jr. really didn’t have a lot of experiences with actually having to deal with white kids like he did when he went to Reardan.

Those reasons alone are enough to keep Sherman Alexie’s award winning children’s book alive. Parents deserve to know what their kids are reading in school, but if they get the warning, they should ask for an alternative assignment, not go to the board and try to have the book banned. Kids deserve to read the experience of an Indian boy who went through all of this. If teachers were to send a letter home telling parents what their kids were reading in class and listed an alternative assignment, then the teachers could avoid being at fault for not warning parents.

Being an award winning children’s book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, this book should be allowed to be read in appropriate age groups with warning and an option for an alternative assignment. Every book deserves a chance so why not give this book a chance to make an impression on high school and middle school kids everywhere? That decision, is all up to you.

Works Cited

Alexie, Sherman. “Why the Best Kids Books Are Written in Blood.” The Wall Street Journal. 9 June, 2011. Print.

Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Little, Brown and Company, print. 2007.

Marshall University. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. 6 January 2015. Print.