An elementary-school administrator in Mississippi has said he was fired for reading I Need a New Butt!, a humorous children’s book about bottoms, to a class of second-graders.
The incident has spurred criticism from free speech advocates, who say the termination could have a chilling effect at a time of conservative-fueled pushes for book bans in schools across the US.
On March 2, Read Across America Day, pupils aged six and seven from Hinds County, Mississippi, were waiting for a school administrator to read to them in a Zoom session, the New York Times reported.
The administrator was unable to attend so Toby Price, an assistant principal at Gary Road Elementary School who was in his office, stepped in. He picked up I Need a New Butt! by Dawn McMillan and started reading to about 240 children.
I Need a New Butt!, for readers aged between four and eight, is about a boy who sets out to find a new bottom after seeing a “crack” in his buttocks which makes him afraid that it is broken.
Price, who has been teaching for 20 years, said Hinds County School District Superintendent Delesicia Martin called him into her office and told him he was being placed on leave.
Two days later, he was accused of breaking the Mississippi Educator Code of Ethics, and fired, Price said.
“I expected a write up,” Price told the Times. “I did not expect to get terminated. I cried the entire way home.”
In a letter to Price, the superintendent reportedly called the book “inappropriate,” pointing to references to flatulence and saying that it “described butts in various colors, shapes and sizes (example: fireproof, bullet proof, bomb proof).”
Price said school officials told him they feared complaints from parents and Martin said that he had been “unprofessional.”
Price told the Times that he had a lawyer and would fight his firing.
Neither Martin nor members of the school board immediately responded to requests for comment from the Guardian.
Authors’ organization Pen America urged school officials to reverse their decision.
“Certainly, the book in question is meant to be humorous for a young audience, and fellow educators might reasonably question if it was the optimal choice for this particular occasion,” Pen America said.
“But in positioning the act of reading a book as a violation of ethics, the district is implying that any educator could be terminated under similar circumstances, whenever an anonymous source feels a book read to students is ‘inappropriate’ for any reason,” it said.
“Such a precedent could be readily abused, enforced with unbridled discretion to censor the reading of books in schools,” it said.
Price told the Times that literacy instruction was crucial at his school, in a county where more than 21 percent of people live under the poverty line.
“We have a lot of reluctant readers,” Price said. “I am a firm believer that reluctant readers need the silly, funny books to hook them in.”
He has three children to support, two with severe autism, he said, adding: “I’m tired. I’m stressed. I’m overwhelmed. I need to work.”
Price received support on social media, including on the school’s Facebook page.
“My granddaughter heard him read the book and thought it was hilarious and not at all inappropriate!” one commenter wrote. “When they do have a hearing, believe me, me and Baby Girl’s gonna be front and center!”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including