To the Editor:

A recent reminiscence with a high school friend prompted me to dust off an old yearbook and find, tucked inside, the April 1977 edition of Paraphernalia, Newtown High School’s student newspaper.

In that issue was a story about a Newtown couple who, having failed to get Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five banned (their word) from NHS, were attempting the same for a 1968 novel entitled Red Sky at Morning, which Wikipedia describes as a “classic coming of age story” and Harper Lee called “a work of art.” According to the article, the couple had “filed a complaint procedure form (to) be presented to a selected review committee and then to the Board of Education.” The principal had requested “justification of the book” from staff in advance of that review.

I have never read either title but am putting them on my reading list. This is partly because of the resonance with me of the mantra “any book worth banning is a book worth reading,” and partly because both are set in the World War II era, and I am a history buff.

Interestingly, parents in some places are still today trying to get Vonnegut’s 1969 book banned. I am eager to see for myself what some might find objectionable about high schoolers being exposed to its words and ideas. I believe that, while specifics may vary, the general reasons for a set of parents trying to ban a book back then, and trying to do so now, are the same.

It reminds me of a “work of art” that has been hanging on our garage wall for decades. It was created by a friend of ours who’d picked up a disk of wood after we’d felled a tree, and scrawled upon it in magic marker the phrase: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Randi Allen Kiely — NHS Class of 1978

Newtown