Category Archives: Education and teaching

Banned Books 101: Teaching Toddlers, Preschoolers, and Early Elementary Grades about the Right to Read

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Back in the trenches this week to review some recent picture books introducing younger readers to the concept of censorship.  Liberal values and a clever concept will get the project off and running, but good intentions may not be enough to avoid the potholes, such as explaining why it can happen, what is at stake, and how it might affect them.

All these ideas are great topics. but probably not age appropriate in a  board book modeled on the Baby Lit series.  “In this colorful celebration of groundbreaking books that have appeared on ‘banned’ book lists, little readers get a glimpse into the books’ important themes,” gurgles the blurb.  In Baby’s First Book of Banned Books, the little rebel-in-the-making is supposed to engaged with the six- to seven- word restatements of the book’s themes illustrationed by Laura Korzon. “ I have gifts that are special” sums up Lois Lowry’s chapter book The Giver (1993) versus “My friends can help when I’m sad or scared” for YA novel Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wall Flower  (1999).  Compare with “We’re not so different you and me” for Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner (2003) and “I am beautiful” for Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970).  The glossary provides parents with scripts and talking points so that they can deftly avoid telling their preliterate children all about the subjects that got the books banned in the first place such as rape, heavy recreational drug use, trauma, mental illness, and the oppression of minorities.  Hopelessly idealistic? Tone deaf? Or cynical?

In 2018, Raj Haldar, aka Philadelphia rapper Lushlife, hit the jackpot as the coauthor of  P is for Pterodactyl: The Worst Alphabet Ever, showing why it’s easier to learn to read than spell in English.  With 26 letters, 45 sounds and over 250 ways to put them together, there are too many choices and too many rules.   An exasperating subject that lends itself to humor, but is the same true for book banning?

Haldar and illustrator Julia Patton in This Book is Banned (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks eXplore, 2023) fool around with a silly narrator and cook up squirrelly reasons for chopping things out of a book.  The cover, end papers, and title page warn the reader to keep it closed up tight. The narrator, when confronted with the prospective disobedient reader, says go ahead, turn the page and see how easy it is to cancel any subject—giraffes, dinosaurs, avocados and beds without monsters underneath.  For example, no can have the story of the Big Bad Wolf because somebody–not  you, dear  reader– was scared and so the big hairy beast was changed into a sweetie pie.  The last page announces that “we banned everything and there’s no ending left to read.”  The way Haldar and Patton break the fourth wall makes for a couple of fun read alouds,  but it won’t be much of a resource if as the adult who has to explain why book banners are turning up the pressure on the school librarian.  The presence of giraffes and avocados in children’s books aren’t as likely to be on the school board’s agenda as sex and drugs.

In The Great Banned-Books Bake Sale, Aya Khalil tries to make an attempt to ban books in an elementary school library real for children that age.  The protagonist is Kanzi, the Egyptian immigrant girl in Khalil’s first book The Arabic Quilt (2020). Kanzi and her class go to the library where they are told the diverse books have been removed on the order of the school board over the objection of the school librarian who acquired them. The children don’t understand what could possibly be wrong with the beautiful books they like because they show “people of many identities, backgrounds, and walks of life.”  The principal and librarian urge them to fight for their right to read and the children hit on the idea to hold a bake sale of goodies mentioned in banned books within a few days.  The proceeds will go towards the purchase of replacement copies of books about families like theirs.  When the treats have been sold, the TV cameras arrive in time to film the peaceful demonstration urging the reversal of the ban. Kanzi finds the courage to read aloud her poem “Books are for everyone.  Am I not important?  Am I invisible?”   The school board backs down a week later and the diverse books are reinstated in the classroom.

An Arab Muslim-American mother, Khalil strongly advocates that black, brown, Asian, Native American, and immigrant (but not LGBTQUIA) children have access to “affirming, inclusive books” in this optimistic story where the characters agree wholeheartedly on what is right (and puffs Khalil’s Arabic Quilt in several places).  Without the opposition coming on stage to voice alternative values, the nature of social conflict and resolution was presented standing up for a set of beliefs without having discussions and negotiations with those holding alternative views. Khalil and her illustrator Anait Semirdzhyan chose in The Great Banned-Books Bake Sale to light the spark of democratic participation by showing the children triumphing over authority on the first try.  Their goal in writing this story was a worthy one, but it underscores why 32-page picture books may not be the best vehicles for explanations of political processes.

There is nothing sunny or optimistic about the treatment of censorship in Banned Book by Jonah Winter, a noted author of non-fiction picture books.    Few of the Amazon reviewers disliked the book, saying it was relevant and important because of its subject.  Winter’s text is redacted : words, phrases, and sentences have been blacked out supposedly to protect the reader from dangerous content. Almost everyone with a comment about the graphic design seemed to agree that as an visualization of the process of censorship, it was better suited for older children, who probably still would have difficult questions with an adult.

The selective blacking-out  of the text  creates intriguing patterns on the page without interrupting the flow of meaning because no text was actually been excised, as is quite clear on the last two pages.  In spite of the black lozenges marching across line after line, the message is unequivocal: “they claim that they only want to protect children when what they really want is power over everyone, because they don’t believe other people have the right to think for themselves.  What had been a book was not just garbage decomposing, turning into dirt.”   Would the same exercise driven the same point home more forcefully to young readers if the text had been a familiar fairy tale like “Cinderella” or “Red Riding Hood” where they could have puzzled out the missing bits of text and explain how their absence affected them?

Illustrator Gary Kelley’s grainy pictures are dominated by shades of blue-gray, slate blue, and grayish lavender, with occasional highlights of tans and pale oranges.  The palette is perhaps meant to communicate the idea that the battle has already been lost in the classroom and school library.  On the first page, a boy furtively looks into a book, as if he expects to be caught and a few pages later is a staring eye peering at a page through a magnifying glass looking for objectionable material.   Children sit mute in class, books open, their hands raised to answer a question to which there is only one answer. Hot red appears only in the two illustrations of the book banners and the devils on the cover.  The association of  the book banners with red sends mixed signals,  its contemporary associations with MAGA clashing with older left-wing ones such as Socialism and Communism.  Of this dystopian picture book, the one Amazon reviewer to give the book one star said, “A bit too stylized and dark for me. As for the text—I’m all for guiding kids to appropriate books and helping them process the difficult ones, but this book (as much as I was able to stomach) came across as bitter, didactic, and self-righteous.”

No denying how wonderful it is that Haldar, Khalil, and Winter all elevate librarians for standing up for children’s right to read in the face of challenges by administrators, parents, and outside organizations, even if  they perpetuated a tired old visual stereotype… From the perspective of a professional with the luxury of buying books capturing the contemporary moment for future readers to study, it is hard to gauge if they can be effective teaching tools with the support of a thoughtful adult or if their presence on the shelves will be more successful in pouring oil on the fire in the struggle for control over curriculum and supporting resources.

Marks in Books 15: Annotations by Ann Taylor Gilbert and her sister Jane Taylor in Limed Twigs to Catch Young Birds

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Ann and Jane Taylor by their father Isaac Taylor, oil on canvas, circa 1792

Collaboration isn’t anything unusual in the performing arts or the sciences, but the construct of the solitary literary genius is so strong that writers who work together can be slighted as less talented.  How texts are created by a team isn’t perfectly understood, especially when evidence for working methods can be elusive.   Some divide up the tasks according to individual strengths.  At the beginning of a project, the great folklorists Iona and Peter Opie did just that: she did the field work, he did the library research.  It’s unclear if the division of responsibilities was so clear cut when they got down to writing the manuscript.

When the collaborators don’t describe their creative process anywhere and no working manuscripts survive, chance survivals may be the only means of learning about how they worked.   Early in their careers, the trio of siblings Ann, Jane, and Isaac junior known as the Taylors of Ongar, together wrote and illustrated works for children.  All three had been trained as engravers, but they also had a turn for writing.   Some hints survive in Ann’s memoirs about the way the girls worked when they were little.  They found skipping rope was condusive to thinking up verse, which sounds a bit like William Wordsworth composing in his head while he walked.

One of the Taylors’ rarest collaborations, the graded reader Limed Twigs for Young Birds (1808) came on the market recently. (The title pays tribute to Lady Ellenor Fenn’s best-selling reading lessons, Cobwebs to Catch Flies.) Cotsen was very lucky to acquire a special copy, which the sisters presented to the Taylors’ old neighbors the Watkinsons after they had emigrated to America years before.

“J” for “Jane” at the end of “The Two Games.”

Isaac signed the copper plate for frontispiece, showing a conversation between the nurse, who is holding a baby,  and her big sister, stockings sagging.  Her dolly has been thrown face down on the floor.  The text is divided into twenty-six storylets in words of one to five letters, then one to four syllables.  At the end of every one is an initial assigning authorship: “A” for “Ann” or “J” for “Jane.”  Each of the young women contributed thirteen passages.  Ann penned “The Bee,” “The Cut,” “Getting Up,” “The Cat,” “The Poor Old Man and the Cakes,” “Learning to Read,” “The Dark,” “The Bird’s Nest,” “The Babe,” “The Kites,” “Disappointments,” “The Church Yard,” and “The Two Sixpences, That at Last Made One Schilling.”  Belonging to Jane are  “The Gay Book,” “The Careful Ant,” “The Idle Fly,” “The Frog,” “Old Dobbin,” “The Blind Man,” “The Two Games,” “The Birth-Day,” “The Rabbit,” “The Evening Play,” “The New House,” “The New Dresses,” and “The Old Mariner.”

Limed Twigs was a rather dreary little book  according to bibliographer Lawrence Darton.    He thought it reflected “The Taylors’ preoccupation with the theme of child mortality and physical distintegration,” but the only storylet to which that is applicable is  “The Church Yard,” an conversation between mother and daughter about the body and the soul that arises during a  walk through the church yard.  They do see a human bone in freshly dug earth, which turns into an object lesson about death, but it is short and short on details.

“A” for “Ann” at the end of “The Poor Old Man and the Cakes.”

All the other storylets’ subjects focus on the mundane experiences of ordinary children and they reflect real familiarity with the interactions of parents and children.  In Ann’s “The Cut,” a little boy says to his father, “O, do see my sad cut!  Is it not a bad one?” as if he is happy to show it off to get some attention.  His father doesn’t take the bait, remarking that yes, it is all red, but not worth crying over. “It is so sad to be cut, do let me cry,” the boy replies, making a play for sympathy.  Papa holds the line, “O no; a boy may not cry!”  And why not, asks his son, arguing that cats cry when they are hurt, and so should he.  Papa points out that he is bigger and older than a cat, and besides, seeing and hearing his son cry makes him sad.  Only when the boy concedes that he’ll try not to cry if it’s not allowed, his father praises him for being brave and tells the cut “Now dry up, sad cut, for my boy did not cry.”  It’s not a strategy acceptable to many parents now, but it’s important to see when it could be used without question.

In “The Two Games,” Jane captures the authentic whine of sibling snark:

James. Charles, pray come out and have a game of trap-ball out on the lawn.

Charles. I shall play at nine pins to day.  I do not like trap-hall half so well as I did: one has to run such a way after the ball, and then I am so often out, and and you do not play fair, I know.

James. O, as to that, I could cheat at nine pins too, if I pleased; but I do not though, I am sure.  I do not cheat in any game; so if you will not come and have a game at trap, you may go where you like. –I shall not play at any thing else, I can tell you.

Jane’s  “The Old Mariner” teaches children that putting sugar in their tea is not an innocent act. It’s not  at all uncommon in a volume composed of short passages to find material with a political slant where the title gives no indication of its presence.  Does the “fine little gentleman” realize that his favorite tea comes from a country half way around the world?  Does he take it with sugar?  “Well then,” says the mariner, “away we sail to the west, to those sultry islands where the sweet sugar-cane is cultivated.  Aye, Sir, and there one may see thousands of poor black negroes, that are brought slaves from their native country, toiling all day long, in the burning sun to cultivate this sweet nicety, for the gentlefolks in England.”

Ann  slips an in-joke into “Learning to Read,” which is a conversation between two girls, who just happen to be named…Ann and Jane.  When Jane asks her friend Ann if she can read, the answer is, “No, to be sure: what need have I to take so much time with a dull book?”  Ann, the resistant reader, is unconcerned if people will think she’s a fool if she never learns her A, B, C. “O, I do not care for that; for I have got a new doll, and a tea-pot, and some cups, and a nice bed for my doll to lie in; and I mean to play all day long and not care for my book.  Will not that be a good way?”  Jane stoutly defends herself, and points out that she doesn’t feel at all like a “mope” when she sits down to look at her lovely picture book, “I am sure you will love it much when you try.”  Jane has the last word, so the reader does not learn if she convinced Ann of the error of her ways!  The reader may not realize that the two anonymous authors are poking fun at themselves, but that doesn’t necessarily spoil their fun.

Critics tend to give the Taylors a bad rap, but they should be given more credit for lively dialogue and humor in their children’s books.