Kurt Vonnegut & Sarah Ockler Books Removed from Missouri High School Library

By Jason Boog 

A Missouri school board voted 4-0 this week to yank Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler and Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut out of the Republic High School library. The move has already drawn thousands of responses online.

Last year, Missouri State assistant professor Wesley Scroggins attacked the books at a a school board meeting and wrote a newspaper column for the Springfield News-Leader (“Filthy books demeaning to Republic education“). This GalleyCat editor will never forget the joy of discovering Vonnegut in his own high school library and can’t imagine missing that experience.

Here’s how Scroggins described Slaughterhouse-Five: “This is a book that contains so much profane language, it would make a sailor blush with shame. The ‘f word’ is plastered on almost every other page. The content ranges from naked men and women in cages together so that others can watch them having sex to God telling people that they better not mess with his loser, bum of a son, named Jesus Christ.” (Via Reddit)