TEXAS DOESN'T NEED BOOK STANDARDS...

it needs State Board of Education membership standards.

Name confusion gets kid's author banned from Texas curriculum

12:00 AM CST on Monday, January 25, 2010

Traci Shurley, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

What do the authors of the children's book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and a 2008 book called Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation have in common?

Both are named Bill Martin and, for now, neither is being added to Texas schoolbooks.

In its haste to sort out the state's social studies curriculum standards this month, the State Board of Education tossed children's author Martin, who died in 2004, from a proposal for the third-grade section. Board member Pat Hardy, R-Weatherford, who made the motion, cited books he had written for adults that contain "very strong critiques of capitalism and the American system."

Trouble is, the Bill Martin Jr. who wrote the Brown Bear series never wrote anything political, unless you count a book that taught kids how to say the Pledge of Allegiance, his friends said. The book on Marxism was written by Bill Martin, a philosophy professor at DePaul University in Chicago.

I went to Borders and used "Bill Martin, Jr." in an author search and the results included the work by the professor. Amazon also has the same problem.