ROCKPORT, Mass.—Rockport school officials have refused a literacy group's request to hand out free copies of a best-selling children's book to first-graders because it ends with a mouse calling a donkey a jackass.

School officials in Gloucester said Tuesday that they plan to send a letter home to parents asking whether they want their children to receive a copy of "It's A Book," by Lane Smith.

Rockport Superintendent Susan King told for Wednesday's editions of The Gloucester Daily Times that she liked the book's message but felt the language is inappropriate.

"It's not something that we're going to send home as a school community to parents," King told the newspaper.

In the book, a mouse calls a donkey a "jackass" after the donkey can't figure out how to use a book and tries to use it as an electronic device. The book is about the importance of books in an increasingly technological world.

Pat Earle, founder of the locally based First R literacy program, said one word does not negate the message of the book, and the word "jackass" is an outdated insult most first-graders would not understand.

"We came to the unanimous agreement that this one word would neither negate nor even cloud the overall and very clear message of the story," Earle said in an e-mail to school officials on Monday. "We believed that the word in another context (a rather out-of-date minor insult) would not be understood as such by 6-year-olds."

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