Quotes from Blue Valley North High School student Sasha Mushegian in The Kansas Star. Sasha spoke out against efforts to remove some of her favorite books from her school's curriculum.

To read the entire article: http://www.kidspeakonline.org/sasha.htm


"Yes, we're not completely mature yet; sure, we often make bad decisions — but maturation is a process. There's no magical age at which we mentally and emotionally become adults."



"How can you expect children to mature if you don't expose them to books in which reality is messy and confusing, morals are not immediately clear, making the right decision requires analysis of subtleties, and characters make the wrong choices? How do you expect students to think for themselves if you never expose them to situations that are challenging and unfamiliar (yet still safely contained within the pages of a great work of literature)?"



"I doubt that the teenagers having promiscuous sex and using drugs are doing so because they read too much and have come across Chris Crutcher and Kate Chopin."



"I just about started crying when I read the indictment of All the Pretty Horses. It seemed to me narrow-minded to ignore the tragic beauty of this coming-of-age story, to refuse to think about the questions it raises about modernity, to disregard Cormac McCarthy's original use of language, focusing instead on the character's cursing, having sex and fighting."