"The Albemarle County School Board has pushed back in the division’s curriculum a book with controversial content, spurring a debate over the age-appropriateness of material with sexual innuendo and fictional online chat room chatter.

“Romiette and Julio,” a modern-day version of the Shakespeare classic, was part of a supplemental list of books that children in their summer before sixth grade could read.

Susan Luekenbach, the mother of a son in sixth grade at Jack Jouett Middle and one in eighth at Sutherland Middle, told the board she was disturbed that sixth-graders are exposed to the book’s content. She cited an excerpt from the book that portrays an Internet chat room:

“Oogacoga: Why you down, baby?

“Spiceboy: She needs some love

“Bigmac: let me make your dreams come true

“Niobe: you ain’t my kind of dream. You are a nightmare!

“Bigmac: you just wish you could have me”

The book is about the hardships that a black teenage girl and a Hispanic teenage boy face as a couple, challenges created by friends, parents and societal expectations. Romiette is the granddaughter of college professors, while Julio is a transfer student from a gang-ridden high school. The two meet in an Internet chat room.

“The values it teaches are not appropriate for this age group,” Luekenbach said. “How many of you would leave your 16-year-old daughter or son alone with a boyfriend or girlfriend you have met for the first time, or any friend for that matter?”

Superintendent Pamela R. Moran said that a committee reviewed the book and found it age-appropriate. Moran upheld the committee’s suggestion for no change, and the School Board voted, 4-2, to move it to the division’s sixth-grade, second semester curriculum. It was originally part of a summer reading book list that students could read after fifth grade.

The book addresses issues that today’s students must face, Moran said.

“In the same way that ‘Romeo and Juliet’ portrayed those contemporary issues at that period of time and ‘West Side Story’ did in the 1960s, this book does focus on contemporary culture,” she said.

The book’s author, Sharon Draper, has taught junior high and high school for more than 30 years. She has been named the National Teacher of the Year and is a three-time winner of the Corretta Scott King Literary Award.

Moran said Draper is recognized as an author who is qualified to write about adolescent issues.

The School Library Journal, a national book reviewer serving librarians and teachers, critiqued the book: “Draper gives a realistic portrayal of the interactions among high school students as well as their relationships with their parents. … Romiette and Julio would be a wonderful curriculum tie-in book, but it also stands alone as a first-rate novel about contemporary teens.”

School Board member Jon Stokes said he would not be comfortable with his 11-year-old son reading the book and recommended it for the seventh-grade list. Stokes said the issue is trying to balance the book’s reading level with its content.

When the excerpt was read to her, Western Albemarle High senior Liza Dunsmore recognized the sexual innuendo. She also said that her brother and sister, both in sixth grade, would be mature enough to handle it, and Dunsmore said they could talk about it with their mother or father.

Literature reflects society, she said, and interracial dating is one of today’s important issues.

Britt Beringer, a senior at Monticello High who also has a brother in sixth grade, said that while she did not think her brother was old enough to read books with such content, she thinks the classroom discussion that accompanies controversial books can broaden students’ perspectives.

“Everybody is raised a certain way,” said Beringer, who attended a private middle school. “It triggers conversation and opens people’s minds up to other ideas. That’s what I think school is all about - understanding that there are other points of view out there.”

She said that last year she read “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” two books with controversial language, but she saw much value in the right vs. wrong, good vs. evil discussions that her class had.

John Du, a junior at Albemarle High, thought the language in the excerpt is not yet used or understood by sixth-graders. After reading the book, some who had not used that type of slang before may do so, he said.

“They’re too young for that type of language,” Du said." (Matt Deegan, The Daily Progress, November 20, 2006)