Mother wants texts banned from high school, while mildly confused about plots.

"My feeling is once something is that graphic, is there not another book? Cal is not Hamlet. There are other books about oppression."

That would be Siobhan Fallon Hogan speaking, a mother of a senior at Rumson-Fair Haven Regional School District in New Jersey--and she's none too pleased about the books and plays her nearly-adult son has to read for school.

Hogan has started a petition, garnering 250 signatures, and has taken her case to the school board to have two specific texts removed from required reading lists: the aforementioned Cal, and the play Death and the Maiden. Both texts are award winners, both are read widely in high schools across the country, and both usually aren't banned.

Cal does involve some violence, and includes a sex scene. Death and the Maiden has a back story about rape and similarly involves some violence. Both are seemingly too much for Hogan or her son's tender sensibilities to handle.

But Hogan apparently hasn't read much of Shakespeare's dramas, and especially not Hamlet, if she thinks it's a feel-good story. Why? Let's count up the deaths in Hamlet--and how they died--shall we?

• Hamlet is stabbed to death by a rapier coated in poison by Laertes!
• Laertes is stabbed to death by a rapier coated in poison by Hamlet! (What timing!)
• Gertrude is accidentally poisoned by Claudius!
• Claudius is poisoned in a couple ways by Hamlet!
• Opehlia decides to commit suicide by drowning!
• Hamlet's dad is poisoned through his ear!
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are both killed by pirates!
• And I don't know why I'm using so many exclamation points, but it seems appropriate!!

This doesn't even include Horatio, who was all set to off himself as well, but Hamlet talks him out of suicide, saying that someone needs to be left to tell the story of what happened. As if that isn't the most obvious thing Shakespeare ever wrote.

No decision has come down yet from the school board as to whether the two texts will be removed from the required reading list.

One thing is for certain though. Hogan was right. Cal is no Hamlet. Cal is a lot less violent and a lot more gentle to read.