Running With Scissors

I ask you, the reader, this question: Does every act in life carry the proper consequence every time? Do those who do wrong always receive the proper punishment, or those who do good receive the proper reward? No, they do not. So why is it that some people believe that books need to carry an unrealistic expectation of consequences? Running with Scissors is a perfect example since it's challenge is based in some part on a "total lack of negative consequences throughout the book." Whatever happened to realism in books? It's a memoir! It's not supposed to have a happy ending! *sigh* Here's the facts:

Author: Burroughs, Augusten
Title: Running with Scissors
Publisher: St. Martin

Challenged as a suggested reading in a class where juniors and seniors earn college credit in Hillsborough County, Fla. (2010). Four high schools — Plant, Middleton, Hillsborough, and Bloomingdale — voted to keep the book and place a “Mature Reader” label on the front cover. Three high schools — Sickles, Robinson, and Lennard — will require parental consent. Gaither High School and Riverview High School voted to ban the book. The book was banned at Riverview because, “This book has extremely inappropriate content for a high school media center collection. The book contained explicit homosexual and heterosexual situations, profanity, underage drinking and smoking, extreme moral shortcomings, child molesters, graphic pedophile situations and total lack of negative consequences throughout the book.”

Source: Robert P. Doyle, Books Challenged or Banned in 2009–2010