Book Called `Soft Porn' -- Parent Wants Edmonds Board To Ban Kindergartner Text

LYNNWOOD - Tonight the Edmonds School Board will consider weighty tomes: "Canada in a North American Perspective" and "Readings in Latin American History," textbooks the district plans to buy.

But tomorrow at a special meeting, just one book is to be on the agenda: "Draw Me a Star," a picture book for kindergartners, designed to be read with parents, which one parent says has a drawing that's nothing less than "soft pornography."

School Board members will decide whether the book, which features an abstract drawing of an unclothed man and woman, should be removed from the classroom.

It will be the first time in Edmonds, Snohomish County's largest school district, that a parent's complaint about a book has gone as far as the School Board, say district officials, who have backed the book.

"It doesn't appear to be inappropriate for kindergarten children," said Brian Benzel, superintendent of the 20,700-student district.

"The staff is reporting to me that it's not untypical for kids to draw pictures like this. And what was persuasive for me was the context of the use of the book - that it was for at-home reading."

But Bernadette Somers, a 33-year-old credit manager and mother of two, says the drawing, which suggests the genitals by shaded geometric shapes, offends her belief in modesty and could lead young children into accepting more-sexualized pictures.

"This kind of soft pornography . . . desensitizes us to modesty. That in itself could lead to harming children," Somers said. "That's why when kids are old enough to start staring at us, we start wearing clothes.

"Yes, they sometimes draw naked people. But that's not something we want to encourage."

Eric Carle, the author of the best-selling "Draw Me a Star," as well as "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," could not be reached for comment. However, parents in the past had objected to the drawing, said his publicist, Jessica Arkel, who faxed a letter Carle had written in response:

"It surprised me that you are disturbed by my depictions of the innocently naked couple," wrote Carle, who lives in Northampton, Mass.

"My illustration style is `generic,' as a friend told me. Another friend, an art critic, compared my pictures favorably to primitive cave paintings. I am pleased with that analogy, for I attempt to simplify nature for children, and through fact and fantasy, to give joy and to help first readers fall in love with books."

The book begins with a toddler drawing a star. The star asks for a sun to be drawn, which in turn asks for a tree and so on until the book is filled with cats, dogs, birds, butterflies, a house and the couple in question. Meanwhile, the toddler has aged into a mature artist.

"Carle's tissue-paper collages - especially the star and sun and flowers -sing with color," said a Chicago Tribune reviewer in 1992, when the book was published by Philomel Books, a division of Putnam and Grosset Books.

In Edmonds, the book has been part of one teacher's library and, as "teacher-selected" material, was not required to go through a districtwide or schoolwide selection process.

"We have confidence in the judgment of our teachers," Benzel said.

"We want them to be making judgments about what their kids need in the context of their classrooms."

Somers' complaint set into motion an ad-hoc review committee composed of district teachers and administrators whose job it was to look at the book and recommend whether it should be retained.

Such committees were busy in 1990, when there were complaints about four books. In 1991 and 1992, parents complained about one book each year; there have been no additional complaints until now.

The six other books that drew complaints, primarily library books were "Slugs," "Marijuana," "Hosie's Alphabet," "Halloween ABC," "In a Dark, Dark Room" and "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark," the last of which also was the subject of complaints in 1992 in the Lake Washington School District.

The "Slugs" book was "crude," one parent said, and discussed "tormenting slugs with tweezers." Some parents were concerned about "demonic symbols" in "Hosie's Alphabet," and they said "Halloween ABC" was "an introduction to witchcraft."

District officials removed only "Marijuana" because, Benzel said, it was out of date and seemed to almost promote drug use. Plus, officials said, it reinforced stereotypes by picturing an African-American male on the front cover smoking a joint.

Benzel is recommending "Draw Me a Star" be retained. Somers, who also complained this year because she said her daughter was frightened by rhymes about witches at Halloween, said she doesn't expect the School Board to remove the book.

"I don't expect to win," she said. "But I do expect them to think about it."