A Missouri school district said it halted a fifth-grade teacher’s reading of a novel containing LGBTQ content after parental complaints, the district told The Lion in a statement.
The West Platte School District in Weston came under fire after one of its teachers read War Games by Alan Gratz, a novel set during the 1936 Berlin Olympics hosted by Adolf Hitler.
The book has a protagonist who actively endorses a gay relationship, which the book frames as courageous and admirable.
Critics describe the novel as a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) graduate seminar inside a story about the theft of gold from the German National Bank during the Olympics.
The book features a white girl from dust bowl USA, a black French diver, a gay German weightlifter and a Hitler Youth teen who is a secret Jew – all of whom eventually give the gold they steal from Nazis to “the resistance.”
