Classic Christmas Poem is Edited

There is just one month until Christmas! With this in mind, this post focuses on a recent controversy regarding a newly published edited version of a Christmas classic: Twas the Night Before Christmas (also known as A Visit from St. Nicholas). In this “updated” version, Pamela McColl, an anti-smoking advocate, edited out all references to smoking included in the Clement C. Moore original. The National Post has published an article on the debate surrounding these changes. While McColl views the edited version as way to protect children, others have criticized the move as censorship. Ann Curry, Gail de Vos, and Alvin Schrader, all from the University of Alberta, have spoken out to oppose the changes and are quoted in the article. Although the version is controversial, the book is available through Indigo and Amazon.ca.

Gail de Vos has reviewed the book for the magazine CM: Canadian Review of Materials.  In this review, she describes exactly how the book has been edited. According to the jacket cover, Santa Claus himself edited out the two lines which reference smoking. In de Vos’ opinion, the changes are detrimental to the development of children’s critical thinking skills. For more information on the book, see the book review.

Recap of the Homeless Connect Event

A big thank you to everyone who was able to come out and help us on Sunday with the first Homeless Connect event of the year! We handed out over 20 boxes worth of books to at-risk and homeless individuals. A CBC news article has reported that approximately 1800 individuals attended the event alongside over 400 volunteers. This is an important event for FLIF and for the city of Edmonton - your help in making this possible is greatly appreciated!

If you were not able to make it out to the fall Homeless Connect, you may want to consider joining us at the spring event. The date is to be determined, but should be in either April or May.

Thanks again to the great volunteers who took the time on Sunday to help out the at-risk and homeless community in Edmonton!

See more photos of the event after the jump!

Literacy Day at Norwood Centre

The Norwood Child & Family Resource Centre recently joined the Community Bookshelf project in late 2011 and they have invited FLIF members to attend their celebration of Family Literacy Day on Friday January 27th 2012 from 11:00 - 3:00

This is a drop-in event throughout the day, if there are several FLIF members who would be interested in stopping by and seeing how the Community Bookshelf donations have helped one of our community members as well as seeing the work that Norwood does in this community send an email to flifblog (at) gmail.com. I'm sure we can organized a ride to stop by and participate in this event. 

More Scrotal Controversy...

Author Neil Gaiman posts his reaction to the school library censorship of Susan Patron's The Higher Power of Lucky. Gaiman sharply, humourously illustrates the absurdity of using the presence or absence of the word "scrotum" to distinguish between quality literature and "other" literature.

He also points to an excellent list of children's literature which also contains the word scrotum. Educational!