ORONO – A novel being read by freshman English classes at Orono High School has been removed temporarily from the curriculum, pending its review.

A parent complained Jan. 26 about strong language and vivid descriptions used in Susanna Kaysen’s “Girl, Interrupted” and requested that it be removed from the curriculum, Superintendent Kelly Clenchy said Monday.

The superintendent reviewed excerpts from the book that the parent provided and decided that the issue required further consideration. He instructed as of Friday, Jan. 27, that the book be removed temporarily from the classroom.

“Girl, Interrupted” is Kaysen’s memoir of being hospitalized in a mental institution at age 18 and diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. The book contains graphic descriptions of sexual acts and suicide, according to the superintendent.

In keeping with the school’s policy on controversial material, Clenchy pulled the book from the class until it can be reviewed by a committee made up of the building principal, a teacher from the subject area of the material in question, the school librarian and a community member.

“I really don’t think that we should be in the business of censorship,” Clenchy said. “What we really need to do is make sure that the resources that we’re using is aligning with our philosophy and the Maine Learning Results.”

The review committee met Monday and was expected to provide Clenchy with a report today.

School board Chairman Robert Swindlehurst explained Monday that the review committee doesn’t just look at specific excerpts from the reading, but must consider the book and subject matter as a whole.

“[The review committee] wants to look at the structure of the book, the reasons it’s used in the classroom, [and] the materials behind it,” he said.

Swindlehurst has been on the board for three years and said this is the first time the review process has been used in that time. The chairman also said he wasn’t sure when or if the policy ever had been used in the past.

Banning books, however, isn’t a practice of the past.

“Challenging books is alive and well,” Melora Norman, Intellectual Freedom chairwoman for the New England Library Association, said Monday. “Banning books and burning books still happens, [but] you don’t hear it as much because media attention is more focused on graphical aspect.”

In a 1993 review, The Washington Post describes “Girl, Interrupted” as Kaysen’s depiction of the “parallel universes” of the hospitalized mentally ill and the rest of society.

“At her best, Kaysen does not point morals or impose insights, but lets adroit imagery, powerful scene-writing and the silence between chapters do the work of judgement,” Diane Middlebrook wrote in her review.

Movie stars Angelina Jolie and Winona Ryder brought “Girl, Interrupted” into the limelight when they starred in the film version of Kaysen’s story that was released in 2000.

The concerned parent has requested that the issue be discussed at next week’s school board meeting, and Swindlehurst said he expects it will be brought up.

“If the parents aren’t pleased with the result, they can then petition the school committee,” Swindlehurst said.

This particular book challenge hasn’t been brought to the attention of Kelley McDaniel, the Maine Association of School Libraries Intellectual Freedom chairwoman, but she said books are challenged on a regular basis.

“Often these things are handled informally,” McDaniel said. “The librarian often is involved, and they’re handled through a conversation. In my experience, 99 times out of 100 that’s where it ends is in that conversation.”

In Orono, Clenchy said that this is more an issue of examining resources and protocol.

“To leave [the book] in the classroom without fully understanding why it was there wasn’t doing justice, I don’t think, to the children that we serve,” Clenchy said. “Educating students is a partnership between the parents and the school, and they need to understand what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.”