Sex and Drugs Get 2 Best Sellers in Trouble with Parents

What's the story on the two at Monday's East Penn School Board meeting?

Board member from 's optional summer reading list after two parents complained that they are "pornographic." The books come with warnings from the school about "mature" content.

The board will consider the measure at its next meeting on September 24, a week before the start Banned Books Week 2012.

Here's more about the books in question:

The Book: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

About the Author: Tom Wolfe was born in 1931 and raised in Richmond, Virginia. He was educated at Washington and Lee (B.A., 1951) and Yale (Ph.D., American Studies, 1957) universities. His best sellers include The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Right Stuff and A Man in Full. His extensive list of awards includes a National Humanities Medal bestowed in 2001.

About the Book: Wolfe's "non-fiction novel" about hippies follows Ken Kesey (author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and his friends known as the Merry Pranksters as they experience a 1960s odyssey of drugs, sex and rock and roll. 

The Book: Prep

About the Author: Curtis Sittinfeld has written the best sellers American Wife, Prep, and The Man of My Dreams, which have been translated into 25 languages. Prep was chosen as one of the 10 Best Books of 2005 by The New York Times, and American Wife was chosen as one of the 10 Best Books of 2008 by Time, People, and Entertainment Weekly. She is a graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

About the Book: Lee Fiora is from a lower middle class family in the Midwest who attends a Massachusetts prep school on a scholarship. The novel is her account of her four years there. It's a world where she never fits in, despite how desperately she might want to.

During her years there, she slowly emerges from being someone shrinking into the background and eventually develops a few friends and tries to carve out her place in its social structure. But being accepted as the equal of the wealthy and privileged is an obstacle that can never be overcome, yet fitting in back home seems just as foreign to her, according to a Reviews of Books summary.

Controversy: Prep has been pulled from library shelves in at least two schools in California after parents complained that the book is "pornographic."

An LA Times blogger wrote, "Southern California seems to be pretty tolerant when it comes to literature. The only challenge was at a private school in Yorba Linda, where Curtis Sittenfeld's "Prep" was removed from an accelerated reading program after a parent complained about sexual content. There was, admittedly, sexual content in "Prep" -- often coupled with a dose of adolescent self-loathing -- but that's the kind of thing anybody can see by turning on the TV to watch (teen drama) "Gossip Girl," right?”