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Tuesday 04 December 2018

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Gay penguins have no place in our libraries, say parents

And Tango Makes Three, a book based on the true story of two male penguins raising a baby, again features in list of America's most complained-about books

And Tango Makes Three, the story of a penguin family headed up by gay penguins, is one of the most complained about books in America
And Tango Makes Three, the story of a penguin family headed up by gay penguins, is one of the most complained about books in America Photo: Simon and Schuster

Love is rarely black or white, and certainly not in the US, where a 10-year-old book about two male penguins raising a baby continues to cause a furore for "promoting a homosexual agenda".

Since 2006, And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, has been a fixture on the American Library Association's list of books that have had written requests submitted by parents and educators asking for their removal from libraries or schools.

It tells the true story of Roy and Silo, two chinstrap penguins at New York's Central Park Zoo who became a couple in 1998.

When another penguin couple had an extra egg that they couldn't look after, a zookeeper gave the egg to Roy and Silo who were nurturing an egg-shaped rock at the time, and they raised a daughter, called Tango.

The book, which has been used in schools to teach about tolerance and different sorts of relationships, celebrates its 10th anniversary on June 2. Sadly Roy and Silo did not enjoy the same longevity, and Silo subsequently took up with a female penguin named Scrappy.

The book has caused a minor stir in the UK as well. In 2008, two primary schools in Bristol removed the book from their shelves after complaints from parents.

Co-author Justin Richardson has previously said: “We wrote the book to help parents teach children about same-sex parent families. It's no more an argument in favor of human gay relationships than it is a call for children to swallow their fish whole or sleep on rocks."

A chinstrap penguin like Tango (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Quiz: How good is your knowledge of banned books?

The BBC reports that other books on the list include Toni Morrison's debut novel The Bluest Eye; Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis, which was turned into an Oscar-nominated film in 2007; The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and A Stolen Life, a memoir by Jaycee Dugard who was abducted as a young girl in 1991 and remained missing for 18 years.

The book that received the most complaints was Sherman Alexie's teen novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Published in 2007, it immediately joined the top 10 banned list of novels for that year, for sexual content and "cultural insensitivity". The book is based in part on Alexie's own experiences of being a Native American attending a predominantly white high school.

Speaking at a censorship conference in Fresno last week, Alexie said that complaints about the book were mystifying, giving an example of one woman in Georgia who had gone on television saying that his book contained "blow job lessons", which was not the case.

"The fact is in the book nobody actually masturbates; nobody has sex,” he said. “And masturbation is referenced two times and in reality once. There no description of any sexual act whatsoever. The book is actually tame.”

He added: "What it really comes down to is people being really f------ condescending to teenagers.”

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