COLUMN ONE : Are Kids Ready for Literature? : Textbooks that use the classics have won praise for keeping children interested. But they’ve sparked a revolt from parents who argue that some are too ‘gross.’

During a lull at back-to-school night last fall, Drury Hill of La Puente flipped idly through his 8-year-old daughter’s reading book. What he saw made him sit up and take notice.

Across the pages marched monsters that bit children’s heads off, pigs that ate excrement, witches that cast spells and Indian chiefs that urged children to cut out the hearts of their mothers and sisters.

“The more I read, the madder I got,” Hill recalled. “All the parents I talked to had no idea this was being taught to their kids.”

Incensed, Hill and others mobilized opposition to the books, enlisting the support of their church pastors and a national Christian group called Citizens for Excellence in Education.

Within weeks, the ranks of critics swelled from a handful to hundreds, and last Thursday, their efforts led the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District trustees to drop the elementary school reading series--titled “Impressions” and used in hundreds of school districts around the country. The same scenario has played out in the East Whittier School District and controversy over the textbooks has spread to five other California districts, including Redondo Beach and Lawndale.

At the heart of the dispute over the textbooks is the trend in U.S. education away from Dick and Jane-style readers toward what are known as literature-based texts.

Nobody ever tried to censor Dick and Jane and their dog, Spot. They were safe and uncontroversial, and for decades they taught children to read. But there was a problem. Dick and Jane were unimaginative stick figures whose stories were written by committee. They bored kids to death.

The new texts win praise from educators for stimulating children’s imaginations and making reading exciting. But a growing number of critics--mainly fundamentalist Christian groups--are mounting a widening attack against several series, which they contend are inappropriate for young children and at odds with traditional values taught in the home.

“Parents have a right to question books that are filled with morbidity and gross, scary things,” says Robert L. Simonds of Costa Mesa, head of the National Assn. of Christian Educators and founder of Citizens for Excellence in Education, which claims 60,000 members nationwide.

Meanwhile, some parents complain that the losers have been their children, who have been forced to make due with makeshift reading assignments while the adults argue over the merits of their textbooks.

Educators say major textbook publishers are watching the “Impressions” debate closely and some predict a chilling effect if more school districts drop the texts.

“If the controversy surfaces over one publisher’s books, all the other publishers have to be concerned,” said Gilbert T. Sewall, director of the American Textbook Council, a New York-based organization that reviews and evaluates textbooks.

Diane Ravitch, a professor at the Teacher’s College at Columbia University, says that critics of textbook reform “should worry about kids being bored in schools. This is a much greater threat to excellence in education than excrement-eating pigs.”

The debate over literature-based texts could spill over into other disciplines next year when the state Board of Education begins reviewing a new series of history and social science books that deal frankly with such issues as slavery, mistreatment of American Indians and women’s liberation.

To Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, the Orlando, Fla.-based publisher that distributes “Impressions,” the allegations that the books promote Satanism and morbidity are ludicrous. The publisher notes that the books contain excerpts from children’s classics such as Walter Farley’s “The Black Stallion,” as well as fairy tales, and that witches and other imaginary creatures have a long tradition in children’s literature.

“I would suggest that parents who are concerned about these stories take a look at the Brothers Grimm,” says Thomas Williamson, director of the publisher’s school textbook department, referring to the Teutonic folk tales first anthologized by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm in 1812. “Children love these books; this is just ridiculous.”

Harcourt also said it has offered to replace the offending books with a more recent Canadian edition in which the poems most frequently attacked as morbid or inappropriate have been purged. But school officials in East Whittier and Hacienda La Puente contend they were mistakenly sent the more graphic U.S. edition. They plan to sue the publisher for breach of contract and say it is too late to appease parents with a different version of the texts.

There is a long history of debate over what kinds of ideas children should be exposed to in school. The most celebrated example in this century was the 1925 Scopes trial, in which a high school teacher in Dayton, Tenn., was found guilty of teaching the theory of evolution, which was illegal at the time.

Although the Scopes decision was later overturned on a technicality, some supporters of the “Impressions” reading series see a parallel in recent attempts to ban the textbooks. They worry that efforts to censor books of all kinds are on the rise. The Chicago-based American Libraries Assn., for example, recorded nearly 500 demands in the last year to ban such diverse works as “Catcher in the Rye,” “Hansel and Gretel,” the Merriam Webster Dictionary, “Death of a Salesman,” a Dr. Seuss book and works by the Greek philosopher Aristophanes.

Several other literature-based series published by Holt, Rinehart & Winston have come under attack in Tennessee and Texas. And a study in August found that California led the nation in attempts to remove books from school and library shelves, logging 23 incidents, according to People for the American Way, a nonprofit group founded by liberal television producer Norman Lear that monitors First Amendment issues.

The push toward literature-based reading texts began in the mid-1980s with the publication of several landmark reports warning that the U.S. literacy rate was in danger because of superficial, poorly written and boring textbooks. At the time, texts followed a formula that limited the number of words per sentence and discouraged the use of unfamiliar terms, a trend that became known as “dumbing down.”

In one textbook, the fable about the tortoise and the hare became “The Turtle and the Rabbit.” In an American history text, Pilgrims were defined as “People who liked to go on long journeys,” according to a spokesman for People For the American Way.

In reaction to these stilted texts, many educators adopted a radical new approach that was actually a throwback to bygone times: incorporating real literature into children’s reading texts--excerpts from beloved classics, poems and stories drawn from folklore, mythology and fairy tales.

One series ranked at the top of the list was “Impressions.” Throughout Canada and parts of Australia, teachers reported that students who had formerly disdained reading were now clamoring for the books.

In the last two years, the series has been introduced in more than 30 school districts in California and hundreds of districts throughout the United States, where it has become “very popular,” a Harcourt spokesman says. It also has the support of Bill Honig, California superintendent of public instruction, who praises it for “getting kids interested in reading.”

“Part of the responsibility of the schools is to put before kids a whole variety of ideas and emotions,” Honig said. “I hope (local school) boards have enough backbone to stand up to . . . a small group of parents who are trying to dictate the curriculum.”

From the start, there were small signs of trouble with “Impressions.” In 1986, educators in Troutdale, Ore., dropped plans to introduce the series after parents complained that the fairy tales promoted interest in Satanism. In Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene school district and in two small coastal communities in Washington state, Gig Harbor and Oak Harbor, the books were approved after a long struggle, during which some parents claimed the books promoted secular humanism and usurped their authority as parents.

Parents opposed to the “Impressions” series say they should have the right to help choose what their children learn in school.

“Why is it right for the local school board to select a curriculum for local use and it’s not OK for the parent to select what would be right for their children?” asked Kathleen Nobbman, a leader of the contingent in Hacienda La Puente that fought against “Impressions.” “Anybody who had done their homework knows there’s a thread that runs through this textbook, and it’s bad.”

Parent activist Simonds says his group does not necessarily want a return to “See Spot run.” But he does want a return until the fourth grade to phonetically based instruction, which teaches students to read by sounding out words. After that, reading should combine phonics and literature-based texts compatible with family values, Simonds says. Death and other traumatic subjects should be addressed in the ninth or 10th grade, “when kids can handle it.”

Simonds’ goal is to gain parental representation on each of the country’s 15,700 school boards. Meanwhile, he will alert his branches around the country to launch a mail campaign urging parents to take action against “Impressions” wherever the books are used.

“We plan to notify parents that these books are not appropriate for the children’s age level,” Simonds said.

Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative author and self-described champion of traditional values who runs a national political organization called the Eagle Forum, says the textbooks have also come to her attention. “We have so many complaints, we may look into it,” Schlafly said.

Some who monitor First Amendment issues believe the debate over “Impressions” illustrates a growing political clout of the fundamentalist Christian movement, which is waging grass-roots battles in many communities to influence what is taught in schools.

“All these advocacy groups have become far more vocal and far more sophisticated in applying intense pressure on publishers,” says Sewall, of the American Textbook Council. In a closely watched decision last month, California’s Board of Education ruled that evolution should be taught in the schools as the only theory on the origin of life. But some felt the board compromised in favor of fundamentalist Christians by requiring that evolution be taught as a theory and not as scientific fact.

“The challenge is to somehow stop this censorship wildfire before it spreads,” said Michael Hudson, general counsel and Western director of People for the American Way. Hudson calls last week’s decision in the Hacienda La Puente district “the latest episode in a multiyear effort by right-wing groups to ban the reading series from the nation’s schools.”

But most of the crowd at the Hacienda La Puente school board meeting called it a victory. When the board announced it would drop the books, most of those in the audience rose in a standing ovation.

A much smaller group of disappointed parents assailed the decision and accused board members of caving in to political pressure.

“It’s so frustrating,” said Robert Evans, whose daughter attends first grade in Hacienda La Puente. “Those books don’t deal with witchcraft. The board just bowed to the . . . hundreds of Bible-bangers who were in here yelling and screaming.”

Times staff writers Sandy Banks, Shawn Hubler and Tina Daunt contributed to this article.

DISPUTE OVER TEXTBOOKS

Hacienda La Puente Unified School District officials object to textbooks--including one containing a version of the traditional “Twelve Days of Christmas” poem--which among other things substitutes the words “wart snake in a fig tree” for “partridges in a pear tree.”