Dad complains about books with 'N-word'

SOUTH TAMPA, Fla., March 18 (UPI) -- A black father has complained that two of the books his daughter was assigned at her Florida elementary school include the same racial epithet.

Both books, "The Land" by Mildred Taylor and in "The Starplace" by Vicki Grove, have been praised for promoting racial understanding. "The Land," which won a Coretta Scott King Author award in 2003, is set in Georgia after the Civil War, while "The Star Place" is set in Oklahoma about 1960.

Darryl Brown thinks fifth-graders like his daughter, Ashyaa, are too young to deal with epithets like the one usually referred to as the N-word. She is a student at Turner Elementary in New Tampa, and he says that another student who was also reading "The Star Place" told her there was nothing wrong with the word.

"My daughter was physically shaking when I picked her up that day," he said.

Brown, a doctoral student in education at the University of South Florida, said when he first complained about the books he was not told how to get them reviewed.