Texts Labeled Morbid, Evil Will Go Back to Publisher : Education: East Whittier School District says it did not receive the books that were advertised by the publisher. Schools are scrambling to find replacement reading texts.

East Whittier School District officials gathered cardboard boxes Tuesday to ship a controversial series of elementary school reading texts, labeled morbid and evil by some parents, back to the publisher.

The district has also directed its lawyer to demand a $160,000 refund for the texts from publisher Holt, Rinehart & Winston of Canada Ltd., Supt. Dorothy Fagan said.

The actions came after the school board met Monday night and decided during a long, closed-door session that the publisher breached its contract by sending the district books that were different from what it had advertised last spring.

Officials for the publishing company said they would not comment on the matter until the firm’s president returns from a business trip today and reviews the issue.

According to Janet Hoyt, curriculum coordinator for the 7,000-student district, many of the controversial stories--including tales about monsters who decapitate children and about excrement-eating pigs--were not in the sample editions district officials reviewed and approved.

District administrators said they did not realize that they had received the wrong books until the controversy surfaced several weeks ago in the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District, where educators also received books different from those they had ordered.

The Hacienda La Puente school board temporarily banned the books last month until the issue can be studied. The board is expected to hear a report at its Dec. 7 meeting.

Meanwhile, teachers and administrators in east Whittier are scrambling to find alternative texts. The district no longer has the books teachers used before the series, titled “Impressions,” was purchased last spring, Hoyt said.

The mix-up, school officials said, caught them by surprise.

“It’s like buying a Cadillac and getting a Ford,” Fagan said.

“Now we don’t have a text, and there’s no money for new books,” John Fulford, the president of the East Whittier Teachers’ Assn., said. “Pulling the textbooks messes up every teacher’s curriculum, and it will keep us dangling in the wind next year. This will take years to settle. They should have just left us alone to do our jobs.”

Some schools are using library books and reserve resource books, officials said. Other schools are trying to raise enough money to buy paperbacks.

“The board made the decision and we respect that,” Jenifer Mac Lowry, a third-grade teacher, said. “The teachers now are looking for ways to make the best out of it.”

Mac Lowry said a special book-selection committee, including teachers and district officials, spent three years reviewing texts before choosing the “Impressions” series. Starting over, she said, will be difficult.

Some parents in the Hacienda La Puente and the East Whittier districts have said the texts evoke devil worship and a curiosity in witchcraft. But some educators say the series stimulates children’s interest in literature.

During heated debates in both districts, the books have raised a conflict between 1st Amendment rights and parents’ rights to censor what their children read.

“I’m a teacher and a parent,” said Olivia Ramirez, who attended the standing-room-only school board meeting in east Whittier Monday night, “and I’d like to see the series banned. Stories like that are frightening for children. They have a hard time separating imagination from reality.”