While Scholastic has gotten a lot of press these last couple of weeks about censoring its book club selections, this is not new; the company has been cleaning up its club editions ever since dirty words started appearing in children's books. Six Boxes of Books has the best analysis of the controversy I've seen yet.
Props to SLJ for getting this story out in the first place, but I have to note one thing that skeeved me out about the lede in the original article: "Don't expect to see Lauren Myracle's new book Luv Ya Bunches (Abrams/Amulet, 2009) at Scholastic school book fairs this year. It’s been censored—at least for now—due to its language and homosexual content." Calling the presence in a children's book of a couple of lesbian mothers "homosexual content" is gross unless the two of them are totally going at it.
The September/October special issue is out. Trouble is its theme and we've posted a few of its articles, including Betsy Hearne's topic-setting "Nobody Knows . . ." on the website. Take a look.
I'm having some trouble with PW editor Sara Nelson's hand-wringing over the use of King & King by advocates of California's Proposition 8, which this past Tuesday overturned the right of gay couples to get married in that state. Nelson was upset by a TV ad produced by the Yes on 8 campaign that featured a Massachusetts couple, Robb and Robin Wirthlin, who objected to King & King being read in their kid's school. (The Wirthlins were in the news here when they filed a lawsuit attempting to stop their school district from using the book.)
Like Nelson, I'm no-on-8 and ok-with-King & King. But while I can buy her assessment of the situation ("a book made of socially liberal intentions is being used to defeat those intentions--against the wishes of its publisher and, perhaps, its creators, who are Dutch and, so far, silent on the matter") I can't share in her dismay. If a book can be used to speak to public policy (which King & King surely does), why can't it be used to protest it? It's not as if the book is being misrepresented, and it's certainly not as if anyone needs to secure the blessings of the creators or publisher in order to use a book to make a point.
I think this is what happens when you forget you've chosen sides. Republicans were horrified when Tina Fey and Saturday Night Live used Sarah Palin's own words to make her look foolish, while those of us who were against Palin found it all an example of karma writ hilariously. Freedom of speech and freedom to publish will always include the risk that someone will turn your own words against you.
If one more person sends me that list of books Sarah Palin tried to ban from the library I'm gonna vote for Nader.
NOTE TO SELF: A FAMILY IS A FAMILY IS A FAMILY...SOME PEOPLE SEE SUBVERSIVE PLOTS EVERYWHERE, ESPECIALLY IN LOUDON
Given the fact that this is a place where there is reading matter covering a wide variety of subjects, one parent whose sensitivities were obviously jarred by the prospect of gay penguin parenting, has managed to get a book pulled from the library shelves. Some people see subversive plots at every turn, even within the pages of a children's book.
A children's book about two male penguins that hatch and parent a chick was pulled from library shelves in Loudoun County elementary schools this month after a parent complained that it promoted a gay agenda.
The decision by Superintendent Edgar B. Hatrick III led many parents and gay rights advocates to rush to the penguins' defence. Many say that the school system should not have allowed one complaint to limit children's literary choices. Some are calling for an overhaul of the book review policy. Besides, many say, what could be wrong with a book about penguins?
"The book is based on a true story . . . of what happens in the animal kingdom," said David Weintraub, director of Equality Loudoun, a gay rights organization. "It's about the joy of being part of a family. These penguins love each other. They take care of each other. The book, "And Tango Makes Three," by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, draws on the real-life story of Roy and Silo, two chinstrap penguins at the Central Park Zoo in New York. It also appears to make a point about tolerance of alternative families.
As the book says, Roy and Silo were "a little bit different" than the boy and girl penguins who noticed each other and became couples. "Wherever Roy went, Silo went too." After they tried to hatch an egg-shaped rock together, a zookeeper gave them a fertilized egg to nurture. Experts say male chinstraps typically share incubation duties with females.The 2005 book, written with simple words and colorful pictures and dedicated "to penguin lovers everywhere," topped the American Library Association's list of banned or challenged books in 2006. Parents challenged the book in Shiloh, Ill., and Charlotte. Administrators in Charlotte initially yanked the book but later restored it, according to news reports.
Read the whole story here:
http://loudounextra.washingtonpost.com/news/2008/feb/16/tango/
Extra Information regarding penguins found on the Sea World site: http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/Penguins/hatching.html:
"Care of the chicks
1 . Chicks require attentive parents for survival. Both parents feed the chick regurgitated food. Adults recognize and feed only their own chicks. Parents are able to identify their young by their chick's distinctive call (Marchant, 1990; Simpson, 1976).
2. Male emperor penguins exhibit a feature unique among penguins. If the chick hatches before the female returns, the male, despite his fasting, is able to produce and secrete a curdlike substance from his esophagus to feed the chick (Marchant, 1990; del Hoyo, et al., 1992) allowing for survival and growth for up to two weeks (Pr6vost and Vilter, 1963-1 Stonehouse, 1975).
I walked into work Monday morning and my boss asks if I saw the Masterpiece Theater production of Wind in the Willows. I had not. I had forgotten it. Oh, Entertainment Weekly. Why have you forsaken me?
Yes, I missed a Wind in the Willows production that featured Bob Hoskins as Badger. Reason alone for self-flagellation or something less dire? Well fortunately for the world at large, Educating Alice is reexamining not only this newest adaptation but also the book itself. I'd somehow never sensed the parallels between the characters mucking about and the British schoolboy tradition so acutely ingrained in the literature. Monica asks, justifiably, whether or not the book is even applicable today. Having grown up at the teat of the Michael Hague version (framed prints remain on the walls of my childhood home, I'll have you know) I've great affection for the text. The bizarre appearance of Pan mid-novel? Just makes the book all the sweeter to me. Plus you can shove the Hague version in the face of Percy Jackson fans and yell, "LOOK! PAN!," and watch them coo. Just don't follow that up with Jitterbug Perfume until they're at least 14.
Tangent. Returning.
If you don't care for random appearances of pagan gods, try the Inga Moore adaptation on for size. Yes, she abridged the text, but maybe in this day and age that's what the book requires. Besides, how can you turn down a cover image like this?
I encourage you to seek out Monica's thoughts on the program, if only to lend your own dulcet tones to her call for opinions on a variety of WITW related-subjects.
good for them. It's common sense that if a word will get a child in trouble in school, it shouldn't be in books either. I doubt any teachers want a student telling them "go to hell"
Well, Anon, there's language I use in school and then there's the language I use "out of school," so to speak. I wouldn't want children's reading experiences to be limited to school settings. I wouldn't want them limited by the language appropriate in school settings, either. I'd like to see people respect children's ability to tell the difference between language they can use in school and the kind they can't. I am confident that they know the difference.
Anon2
Anon1,
It's probably just bait your casting, but I'll rise to it just a bit. The logical extension of your argument is that any language not used in polite adult conversation should also not be used in books for adults. Your line of argument is fouled.
IF
I went to read 6Boxes's commentary. I really don't like the Scholastic book fairs. In the twelve years since my kids started school I have seen them go from mediocre to worse. They push off the cheapest, cheesiest, tacky, vacuous schlock on an audience that--for once in a YEAR probably--has the money in pocket to buy a book.
There's huge social pressure to give your kid money for the bookfair, so parents who would otherwise never buy a book for their kids, cough up the ten bucks. And what can the kids buy with it? Remainders that have sold nowhere else, overpriced pencils, posters, and TV tie-ins.
At the same time that I hate it, though, I have to say--it makes money. 6Boxes laments that Scholastic has a monopoly on bookfairs, but maybe this is WHY they have a monopoly. They don't ever push the envelope. They keep everything mainstream to a fault. When everyone cries out for a book to be included, then they know it is time to add it to the bookfair, but not before.
Anon2
As a Canadian who is often baffled by America’s policy on things like censorship particularly when free speech is in the country’s constitution, I’ll say this, it is up to the individual to put up the good fight. Now your rights Americans then make certain it is upheld.
I agree Roger. The "homosexual content" bit was about the lamest thing ever.
Seconded. Is it "sexual content" if a kid has, well, parents? What about all those books about kids with a baby sibling on the way? Does anyone have a problem with those? I don't think so.
My middle grade novel was considered by Scholastic Book Club-- they wanted me to take out the word "butt," any reference to the girl's period, etc etc. I was mayyybe willing to take out "butt" but come on, getting your period is biology. You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the Facts of Life. I see nothing controversial in the Facts of Life.