FOLEY, Ala. (AP) -- A complaint from a parent has prompted school officials to pull Aldous Huxley's novel "Brave New World" from library shelves in Foley High School.
School officials said the book has not been banned, but is being reviewed after educators received a complaint about the novel being placed on a required reading list for 11th-grade English students.
"Brave New World," first published in 1931, is set in a totalitarian dystopia in which the population is controlled by drugs, genetic engineering and conditioning from birth.
The book was ranked No. 5 on the Modern Library Top 100 best English language novels of the 20th century.
The novel is on both the county and national reading list for advanced placement high school students, said Randy Davis, Baldwin school system spokesman.
Kathleen Stone of Elberta filed the complaint in letters to the school and Gov. Don Siegelman. She said Wednesday the novel's references to orgies, self-flogging, suicide and the characters' contempt for religion, marriage and family do not make it a good choice for high school students.
"When you're a college student, it's one thing, but I don't think too much of assigning this to high school students," Stone said.
The book was removed from Foley High just before the American Library Association's annual "Banned Book Week," which begins Saturday
Beverley Becker, ALA associate director of the Office on Intellectual Freedom said "Brave New World" ranks 54th on the ALA's list of the top 100 books drawing complaints during the 1990s.
"It's important to keep books available and accessible and for people to have the freedom to read them," Becker said.
Foley School system policy calls for a book under review to be removed from the school library until the examination is completed.
Under the review process, a committee of parents, teachers and administrators will read the book and hear comments, then decide whether it should remain on the reading list, according to Nancy Danley, the system's secondary coordinator.
