Yet another school district has made a fuss over And Tango Makes Three, the book about the chick hatched by two male penguins, and the American Library Association’s Most Challenged Book of 2006. The school superintendent of Loudoun County, Virginia, has instructed county elementary schools to take the book out of general circulation and move it to the teacher’s reference shelf, after one parent complained. A spokesperson for the schools said:

Developmentally, some students in the younger grades might not have been able to understand this without having an adult, such as a teacher, parent or guardian reading it with them. So we recommended that this would be a book that a child read with an adult so it can be put in context.

Developmentally, my four-year-old son is perfectly capable of understanding that a penguin has two dads. It’s an avian parallel to his two moms, and he certainly understands us (better than we understand him, sometimes). In fact, since the specifics of sexual reproduction are still vague to him, one might argue that he is more capable of understanding two penguin dads than are older children. His friends, too, seem rather blasé when they find out he has two moms, and I can’t imagine penguin dads would phase them.

On a positive note, I love that the Washington Post used a quote from a straight mom whose daughter wanted to check out the book, demonstrating that this isn’t just a “gay” issue, but one about acceptance of all types of families.

Sigh. I suspect this won’t be the last such kerfuffle. I hope someone organizes a good day of activism around this—filling the library lawn with stuffed penguin toys or holding a demonstration dressed in tuxes. (And why someone hasn’t licensed the right to sell stuffed dolls of Tango and his dads, with all profits going to an organization that educates about tolerance and diversity, is beyond me.)