The State - News from Aug. 18, 1989

“The Catcher in the Rye,” J.D. Salinger’s 1951 novel about a rebellious teen-ager, has been removed from a Kern County high school’s reading list. Complaints from parents about profanity in the novel prompted The Muroc Joint Unified School District to remove the book from the list earlier this month, said board member F.O. Roe. The novel will remain in the libraries at the district’s high schools. “We had such a horrible outcry from the community,” said Roe. “We thought it better that we pull the book. If it was the only book we had it would be different, but there’s a large selection of books available.” Shelley Keller, a Boron High School teacher, said that before assigning the book to 9th- and 10th-grade students, she wrote a letter to parents explaining that it was controversial. Students whose parents objected were assigned other books, she said.