Category Archives: Politics and Society

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 reviewing 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, how it can affect them, and what is at stake.

All great topics for 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 should be engaged with the six- to seven- word themes and illustrations 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 with talking points so that they can deftly avoid in dialogue with their preliterate children the subjects that got the books banned in the first place such as rape, heavy recreational drug use, oppression and ostracization of minorities, trauma, and mental illness.  Tone deaf?  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) to fool around with a silly narrator and cook up squirrelly reasons for chopping things out of a book.  The cover, endpapers, and title page warn the reader to keep it closed. The narrator, confronted with the disobedient reader says go ahead, turn the page and see how any subject can be cancelled—giraffes, dinosaurs, avocados and beds without monsters underneath.  No can have the story of the Big Bad Wolf because somebody–not  the reader– was scared and so he 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 fun read alouds,  but it won’t be much of a resource if you have to explain why book banners are turning up the pressure on the school librarian.  Giraffes and avocados aren’t likely to be on the school board’s agenda.

In The Great Banned-Books Bake Sale, Aya Khalil tries to make a book banning 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 for the boys and girls.  The children don’t understand what could possibly be wrong with the beautiful books they like for showing everyone “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 that about families like theirs.  When the sweets are all sold, the TV cameras arrive in time to film the peaceful demonstration urging the reversal of the ban and Kanzi finding 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 their cases.

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 puff Khalil’s Arabic Quilt in several places).  Without the opposition being on stage to voice alternative values, the nature of social conflict and resolution has been simplified to the act of standing up for a set of beliefs without having to discuss and negotiate with those with a different viewpoint. Khalil and her illustrator Anait Semirdzhyan chose in The Great Banned-Books Bake Sale to light the spark of democratic participation by showing the triumph of authority on the first try, underscoring 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 and gave the impression that they thought it was relevant and important because of the subject.  Winter’s text is redacted with words, phrases, and sentences blacked out with a reason for obliterating them to protect the reader from dangerous content. Almost everyone with a comment about the graphic design seemed to agree that as an explanation of the process of censorship, it was better suited for older children, who still would have difficult questions for an adult.

The blacking out creates intriguing patterns on the page without interrupting the flow of meaning because no text has 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: “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” and they could puzzle out the missing bits of text and respond to their absence?

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 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 acknowledge librarians in their picture books for standing up for children’s right to read in the face of challenges by administrators, parents, and outside organizations, even if a tired old stereotype is perpetuated… From the perspective of a professional with the luxury of buying books capturing the contemporary moment for the future, 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.

Documenting the LGBTQIA+ Community’s Concerns in Children’s Books

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Historian Susan Stryker has defined transgender people as those who “move away from the gender they were assigned at birth,”  a phenomenon that can be documented in many societies and cultures long before medical technology allowed these individuals to bring their bodies into alignment with their identities. Writing transgender history from the perspective of the marginalized is a challenge when the chief sources until recently tended to be produced by medical professionals, psychologists, law enforcement officers, etc. belonging to institutions with an interest in controlling them as outsiders. Autobiographers had to brave enough to risk inviting readers, whose intentions and sympathies could not be known, into their confidence.

With many prospective buyers of children’s books wanting ones that promote diversity by showing child characters that look and live in accordance with their identities, there has been an explosion of books for families with transgender members, many of them by people with lived experiences or by sympathetic activists. Reviews and recommendations are relatively easy to access because so many lists of resources are available on the webpages of medical schools and psychiatric associations, specialized independent bookstores and blogs.  to mention just a few.

Cotsen is assembling a cross-section of illustrated books about transgender childhoods and history for young readers which researchers can consult now, but even more importantly, in the future.  With increased pressure on public and school libraries to discard or severely restrict access to controversial books for children, the responsibility to preserve these materials as historical sources falls on collections whose primary constituents are not young people and their families, the teachers, and librarians who engage with them.

I Am Not a Girl by Maddox Lyons and Jessica Verdi with illustrations by Dana Simpson is a project published in 2020 by Roaring Brook Press, one of the most prestigious imprints in the Macmillan Children’s Book Department. “Based on a true transgender identity journey” of co-author Maddox Lyons, who wrote this after he came out to his parents because they could not find books “for and about kids like him.” Simpson the illustrator considers this assignment “an honor and a privilege” for a transgender woman like herself who hopes the book will foster mutual understanding between parents and their transgender kids who “should get to be who they are.”   The best incidents in the main character Hannah’s story are surely based on Maddox’s experiences—the pirate queen denying she’s a girl on Halloween, rehearsing his coming out speech to his parents in front of an audience of stuffed animals, admiring the boy’s haircut he’s always wanted for wear for class picture day.   A list of transgender individuals, male, female, and non-binary, from  Renee Richards “eye surgeon, veteran, athlete, and tennis coach who won a landmark case for transgender rights” to Jonathan Van Ness “nonbinary hair stylist, podcaster, and television personality” are included for inspiration.

If LGBTQIA+ parents want to be able to introduce their pre-school-age children to inspirational role models in transgender history, Little Bee Books , an independent publisher of progressive and inclusive children’s books in New York City, has started an uplifting series board books called “People of Pride”  featuring biographies of  television star Ellen De Generes, Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician in California, and drag queen, activist, and media personality, Ru Paul Charles.  Victor Chen is credited for the illustrations, but no one lays claim to the pedestrian text about a “trailblazer” (defined in the glossary as “a person who makes it easier for others to succeed”) surely called for a lot more sparkle.  Even if the text had more juice, it probably could not have helped a toddler grasp anything about the contributions AIDS activists and drag queens have made to society.Sarah Savage, author of She’s My Dad: A Story for Children Who Have a Transgender Parent or Relative (2020) illustrated by Joules Garcia is good example of the positive children’s books about difference that British publisher Jessica Kingsley  is known for.  The picture book shows without judgment a child’s joyful acceptance of her father’s transition to a changed body, new identity, and happier life. Reviewer Ugla Stefanía Kristjönudóttir Jónsdóttir, writer and co-director of My Genderation, praised She’s My Dad as “a sweet, gentle book that doesn’t make being transgender a big deal at all. It’s presented as a part of everyday life and will allow kids to connect to the characters and at the same time learn about different types of families.”

This book seems to present an ideal scenario of unconditional love fulfilled, which the community hopes will someday be the norm. While the account covers the issue of pronouns cogently, it glides over other equally important difficulties inherent in the characters’ situations.  The father is presumed to be a single parent, supported by his parents and brother, his Black wife, and mixed-race daughter.  Mini’s mother is never mentioned and her daughter expresses no sadness at her absence from the family group, the perfect daddy’s girl. The process of transitioning from “he” to “she” covers the surgery and recuperation at home, which disrupts any family’s routine in tiring and unexpected ways, in a page about to a hospital visit, where Mini gives her dad a card and favorite stufftie for comfort.  The chief markers of transitioning are  changes in clothes and hair styles: Mini in her overalls and rainbow tee and her dad in a long layered bob and summery white dress bond over doing their nails together. How honest is six-year-old Mini’s perfect acceptance of her father’s decision, over which she has no power, yet impacts her enormously?  Does Mini as an exemplar set up impossibly high standards for other children, who may be intimidated by Mini, when they compare their divergent thoughts and confused emotions to hers?

If one takes the long view of these books, they are as old as time, no matter how controversial the contents. Their purpose is to train children how they should go, so imagination and art are powerful tools to make the presentation of the values the community wants internalized compelling.