A Coeur d'Alene committee is taking on the American classics.
A district curriculum review committee has recommended that John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" be removed from classroom instruction.
The Spokesman-Reviewreports that the school board will vote on the recommendation next month.
Review board member Mary Jo Finney cites the use of profanity and a negative story line as the reasons she objects to the 1937 book about two migrant ranch hands.
Another committee member says the language doesn't bother him but thinks the language is too "dark" for ninth graders.
Coeur d'Alene City Librarian Bette Ammon says she's disappointed that the school is considering removing the book by Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning Steinbeck.
She said the novella is that could continue inform students' lives beyond graduation.