An Alabama state senator is making headlines for calling on educators in his state to effectively ban Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye, even though—or perhaps because—the book is on the list of "text exemplars" for 11th graders in the Common Core State Standards in English/Language Arts. 

"The book is just completely objectionable from [the] language to the content," Republican Sen. Bill Holtzclaw told a state media group last week. He added, according to AL.com, that lawmakers should not dictate curriculum materials to schools. 

Morrison's oft-taught novel, about a young black girl's struggles with self-worth and identify in 1940s Ohio, has become a flash point for opponents of the common standards because of its occasionally graphic content, including a highly detailed incestuous rape scene. Though the standards' exemplar texts are meant to serve as "guideposts" rather than requirements, some detractors see the book as emblematic of the new instructional framework's purported threat to local control and parental oversight of what's taught in schools. A much-linked-to post by a conservative blogger, for example, refers to The Bluest Eye as "common-core approved child pornography."

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