Ted Dawe can understand where Family First is coming from in trying to get his book restricted, but he thinks they are ignorant of teenage reality.

The conservative Christian group wants the book Into the River to be classified R14, because it contains sex, drugs and swearing. The Film and Literature Board of Review has put an interim restriction order on the book until a classification decision is made next month.

"I know that [Family First has] this purpose as moral guardians for young, sensitive people and I have no argument with that purpose until it starts to impinge on the rights of free speech and free expression," says Dawe. "We all care about our children actually, even I do."

FAIRFAX NZ Auckland novelist Ted Dawe.

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The former high school English teacher, who taught at Dilworth School and Aorere College among others, says his book is "innocuous" compared to other forms of media that teenagers use and he finds the restriction "baffling".



"To me it says something strange about society and parenting. Don't they know the music their kids listen to, don't they look at the games they're playing, don't they check their internet sites? To look at my book and [say] it's damaging to the youth of this country shows a gross ignorance of how things are these days."



The young adult novel, which tells the story of a 14-year-old boy who is bullied at boarding school and contains an adult-child sexual liaison, is based in part on what Dawe saw happening at schools where he worked.

"I don't like to make it too transparently obvious, and characters and situations are not photographic reproductions of what happened, they are a pick and mix - but I couldn't have written that book if I hadn't seen the things in that book happen before my eyes. That happens in New Zealand schools, it's happened at schools I've worked at, it happened at a school I went to. That's life, I'm not just throwing it in there for a gratuitousness, it's just part of what goes on in schools — read the paper."

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