News out of Orono that the book “Girl, Interrupted” was reinstated into the ninth-grade high school curriculum is welcome.

The book was challenged because it contains references to suicide, incest and descriptions of sex. Some parents say its content is inappropriate.

A committee including a principal, a teacher, a librarian and a member of the community decided, according to The Associated Press, that the questionable material, in the context of the book, could be discussed in a meaningful way with an adult teacher.

“Girl, Interrupted” is the memoir of a young woman who was institutionalized in 1967. It chronicles the difficult circumstances or abuse she suffered.

We haven’t read the book; we did see the movie. Way back when we were in school, however, we remember similar controversy involving “Ordinary People,” by Judith Guest, and “Catcher in the Rye,” by J.D. Salinger. Some of the same themes of teen angst, suicide and sex were there. Of families thrown into turmoil and of teens struggling to survive.

Whether it’s Holden Caulfield’s distaste for phonies and struggle with death or the disintegration of the Jarrett family after the death of their older son and the attempted suicide of his younger brother, the books seemed relevant on a personal level when we were reading them. The characters seemed like real people with real problems. They lived and breathed.

Approaching the complexities of adolescence and not coming off like a phony require a realism that can sometimes reveal uncomfortable ugliness. The books that have touched us – and that we remember after all this time – are the ones that didn’t shy away from that, but helped us to understand.

Holden’s wish for himself was to protect young children playing in a field of rye on the edge of some crazy cliff. He wanted to catch them, guard them, keep them from falling. He wanted to protect their innocence in a not-so-innocent world.

That’s what the parents who objected to “Girl, Interrupted” – and “Ordinary People” and “Catcher in the Rye” before it – wanted to do.

Peeking into the intimate details of another life through a book is valuable not for the prurient or lurid moments uncovered, but for the reflection of ourselves we can sometimes glimpse.