League Own
A of our Brooke Baum
“Absolutely not.” These are the words that led Carin Meister, Pegasus librarian, to pull out of the interschool Battle of the Books league to which the school has belonged for over a decade. The message was delivered in response to Meister’s suggestion to the league to add The Magic Misfits to this year’s reading list. When the other schools refused as a result of the book’s brief mention that a character has two dads, Meister was faced with a dilemma. Should she remain a quiet bystander in the presence of discrimination? Absolutely not. When Meister became the Pegasus librarian thirteen years ago, she inherited Battle of the Books—or BOB—a voluntary
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THE PEGASUS SCHOOL
program in which students read twenty books and participate in an interschool competition. But to Meister, the competitive aspect of the program is hardly the point. “The purpose of BOB,” she says, “is that kids discover books they might not have ordinarily encountered on their own. Reading should prompt a discovery of different genres, different kinds of people, and different ways of life.” However, Meister recently learned that the league did not share this philosophy when she received an email in which it was stated unequivocally: “We will not read any books with gay characters.” Meister was shocked. “For me,” she says, “seeing it in writing was a huge wake-up call.” When Meister tried to defend the book at the league’s annual meeting, not only did the league uphold its decision, but it also rejected a second of Meister’s titles because of the book’s mention of reincarnation. And so, she decided it was time to take a stand—to stand up for our students’ right to read diverse texts and for families of all kinds to see themselves reflected in the books we read. Meister made the decision to drop out of the league.
