Asked to Delete References to Racism From Her Book, an Author Refused

[LJ Beck]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/06/...te=1&user_id=375eb6517a78185175eefbbfbb1cc528

"The case, involving Scholastic, led to an outcry among authors and became an example of how the culture wars behind a surge in book banning in schools has reached publishers."

The book, called “Love in the Library,” is aimed at 6- to 9-year-olds, written by Maggie Tokuda-Hall.

This is the bit Scholastic, a publishing giant that distributes books and resources in schools, wanted out...

 

[SarahC]

What kind of 6 year old is this aimed at?? “Biff and Chip go to the seaside” was deemed to be an advanced sentence when I was that age.

 

[Peyton Stafford]

This is not about reading level. This is about Florida, Texas, and the South. Big markets with increasingly bigoted requirements for books. Their goal is to hide their history of racism so they can continue the reality into the future. Imagine trying to publish in Nazi German, today's USSR, or any other authoritarian regime that insists your books support their party line. @MattScho may shed more light.

 

[SarahC]

I know that, and that is clearly wrong on so many levels.

But in this case, should a book aimed at 6 year olds discuss murder, generational trauma and voter suppression? Children will discover the bottomless box of horrors labelled humanity soon enough.

 

[Hannah Faoileán]

Ok, so this was the author's note (glad Scholastic eventually agreed to keep it in), and I'm assuming it's aimed at the parent/guardian/school buyer and not the 6-9 year-old. I'm assuming the language/sentence construction in the story is more basic because I only know a tiny handful of 9 year-olds who would manage this reading level.

 

[SarahC]

Aah, that makes far more sense!

 

[Pamela Jo]

I think most 6 year olds love Greek myth because it talks about real stuff. The same reason Freud used it for archetypes. If children are picking up notes of racism in the world-it helps to have a context. If this is about establishing the context (didnt happen, wasn't that bad, slaves were better off) then I would hope that context would be factual -not ideological no matter what ideology. Because it's the facts vs ideology approach to life that is really being taught.

 

[LJ Beck]

Yes, I should have said that bit was the author's note! Thanks @Hannah F !

 

[Brooke]

reminds me of those readers who constantly get mad at stephen king for putting racist or homophobic characters/dialogue in his writing. they think his depiction of characters having these beliefs means he has these beliefs, but honestly, if every writer believed everything their characters said, all of us would have to be some pretty bad people
although i can understand this censorship for books aimed at, like, 2-9 year olds, i think it's better to have these "bigoted" or politically incorrect characters in writing than to try and have readers believe the whole world is just a nice game of doubles tennis, especially for MG/YA books!