High School Library Books - Red at the Bone

Warning: This post contains sexually explicit material that is not appropriate for children.

The book Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson is available at the Central High School library in the Grand Haven Area Public School system. Here is a review of the book by a GHAPS parent followed by a review from GHAPS representatives.

Melody was a child born to teenage parents Aubrey and Iris. The book begins with a celebration of Melody’s 16th birthday and flashes back to tell the story of the teen pregnancy and raising of the child.

Although teen parents deserve to have role models in books, this example offers teen parents little to emulate which will improve their situation. Rather, Iris leaves her child to pursue a college education. Instead of focusing on difficulties of collage and success after years of hard work, the author details Iris’s lesbian encounters, drug use and rejection of her baby’s father. These moral values only serve to breakdown society.

This book further encourages the breakdown of society through the use of vulgar language, promotion of drug and alcohol use, and normalization of multiple sexual partners. It contains many descriptions of sexual encounters including, straight, lesbian and phone sex. In addition, it contains references to sexual fetishes, incest, and child sex (age 11). Here are some examples.

Vulgar language

p.30 – Were they fucking already?

p.173- That old-ass dude from…like I want to suck his wrinkled-ass dick

p.174- You’ll get your fuck on. Trust.

Drug and Alcohol Use

p. 128- He wondered if she was high.

p.163-Earlier they had finished their own joint.

p.172- Lou was drunk as hell.

Sexual Text

p.31 – The way it feels the first time you’re inside a girl.

p.42 – Most times Aubrey wore a condom. When he didn’t have one, he pulled out in time.

p.65 - … His hand beneath her shirt… she reached inside his pants, then into his underwear and wrapped her hand around him. He bit down hard on his bottom lip, closed his eyes, and waited for what came next. He was terrified of what came next. He had only done this to himself. His own Vaselined hand in the bathroom, with the door locked and water running in case he cried out to the images of girls he had only seen fully clothed re-imagined naked playing in his head…… THIS CONTINUES FOR FOUR MORE PAGES.

p.102 – in the middle of the night at 9 months pregnant, they found ways to have silent sex

p.106- I heard it was two boys at once. I heard it was her own daddy that did it. I heard there was another in the house she had when she was just 11.

p.124- When he kissed her, he wanted her to swallow him. He wanted to be all the way inside of her.

p.128- (phone sex) -He felt himself growing hard and told her…. Telling him what she was doing to him and how

p.159-(lesbian sex) – Shirts left on, underwear ripped, legs cramped from standing…She traced her fingers over Jam’s breasts, down her belly and into the thick patch of black hair… Jam’s mouth was on her breast….during their night of lovemaking, she’d been able to keep the girl’s mouth away from her breasts, moving instead back up to her own lips or down between her legs…breasts… milk seeping out over her belly

p.164- She let Jamison’s hands explore her body but grabbed them when they reached for her breasts. Already she could feel them leaking into her bra. (milk)

Society Breakdown

p.39 – … and what if the married sex isn’t good? Then you’re a whole other kind of fucked.

p.189 – (promotes lots of sexual partners) – There were so many before him. The first was a boy from my childhood when I was 13…. Other boys followed and I learned quickly not to love them….to love the feeling of them inside me.

Finally, it is filled with the subtleties of Critical Race Theory. If you are unfamiliar with Critical Race Theory, it goes by many names including social-emotional learning, diversity, equity, and inclusion. It is not a subject but ideas that are infused in learning materials and lead students to conclude whites are responsible for centuries of horrible oppression and non-whites are oppressed victims.

Here are some examples.

CRT

p.72 – He know the system was the white woman on the beach when he was seven years old who asked his mother why he wasn’t in school on a weekday and the grocery store dude who side-eyed him, then asked his mother if she had any other foster children.

p.80 – Those Tulsa white folks burned my grandmama’s beauty shop to the ground! They burned up the school my mama would have gone to and her daddy’s restaurant. They nearly burned my own mama, who carried a heart-shaped scar on the side of her face till the day they laid her in the ground……

p. 86 – Those white men who torched… white folks who laughed

p.90- black folks got to have more than white folks thought was right

p.120 – fucked up country “white” names, divided lunch tables, white girls snatching basket-ball playing brothers behind hallway corners

p.166- She was the only daughter of atheist college professors. She identified as queer, had a pierced nipple, and interrogated white professors.

This book also was reviewed by Grand Haven High School and Central High School librarian Dana Rider, Lakeshore and White Pines librarian Sarah McElrath and Instructional Services Educational Director Mary Jane Evink. Here is their review.

The book centers around two black families that are connected by a teenage pregnancy and the ramifications that stem from that. It also touches on how life can mold a person to who they are, including a grandmother that survived the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921, a father that died in the World Trade Center on 9/11, and of course the teenage pregnancy. Specifically it explores the many facets of life that cause a person to develop their sense of morals and character. Jaqueline Woodson is an excellent example of literary tools and is a phenomenal writer that students have read many of her other works.

The GHAPS reviewers determined that they will take no action on this book as they believe it is appropriate for the school library.