In the Southold (NY) Union Free School District, third graders can continue to hear the story of a young girl’s experience under Taliban rule, as told in Jeanette Winter’s book, Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan (Beach Lane Books, 2009). However, the book’s use in the district of 865 K–12 students does not please everyone—including seven-year veteran board member Scott DeSimone. “I think our kids are exposed to things too early and maybe this is more appropriate for a fifth or sixth grader,” DeSimone, an attorney who has a fifth grader and a ninth grader attending school in Southold, tells School Library Journal. “I am personally opposed to it.” As part of the New York State P-12 Common Core Learning Standards, third graders are to be exposed to many types of materials, including literary nonfiction. Nasreen’s Secret School has a Lexile measure of 630L, a scale used by educators to determine the difficulty of a text, and is considered a typical reading level for third to fifth graders. The book is being suggested by companies supplying Common Core materials to schools, including Expeditionary Learning, just one company awarded a contract for Common Core curriculum by New York State. In its review of the book at time of publication, SLJ said it achieves a “delicate balance that is respectful of the seriousness of the experience, yet presents it in a way that is appropriate for young children” and called it “an important book that makes events in a faraway place immediate and real.” Yet concerns about the context of the story, which deals with the disappearance of Nasreen’s parents during Taliban rule, were raised at an October school board meeting in Southold, with board members questioning whether the story was appropriate for third graders, who were reading it in class. Superintendent David Gamberg says he asked teachers and the building principal at Southold Elementary School to take a look at the story themselves, speaking with them about how they used the text with students. He then gave his approval to have the story included in the third grade curriculum, but only as a read-aloud with a teacher present. Gamberg says he felt the students would benefit from the text, as he believes the story tackles the subject matter “in a responsible way.” “The students are not independently reading it,” adds Gamberg. “Teachers are going through the text and reading it with students.” DeSimone says that the book was greenlit but only as a read-aloud by teachers, and just this week. To him, that’s still too much time spent with the story for third graders. “I still don’t know how that’s necessary to bring that to classrooms, to teach them to read,” he says. “I can’t wrap my head around that.” DeSimone is also concerned that other materials may be brought into school that he feels are not be suitable. He plans to explore what students are being taught through the new Common Core Learning Standards in the state. “I think you’re going to find at every grade level similar situations,” he says. “I personally will probably be poking around the New York State curriculum.”