‘Authors Against Book Bans’ Mobilizes

From Publishers Weekly:

A group of children’s authors is rallying against the rising number of book bans and challenges nationwide, speaking out about the erasure of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ voices. Under the leadership of Samira Ahmed, Joanna Ho, Gayle Forman, Andrea Davis Pinkney, Alan Gratz, David Levithan, Sarah MacLean, Ellen Oh, Christina Soontornvat, and Maggie Tokuda-Hall, Authors Against Book Bans has already made an impact in the ongoing battle for the freedom to read.

Levithan told PW that the coalition evolved organically from a shared sense of urgency. “Over the past couple years, whenever I would talk to other authors, a number of us expressed extreme frustration and concern about what was going on. And it was always a conversation about ‘what can we do?’ The side that was banning books was organized—both on a national and state level. So it became really apparent that we, as authors, could be the spine to the body that was organizing to fight book bans.” Discussions began in earnest at the end of 2023, and AABB launched this past January.

Levithan had previously been working with PEN America on its lawsuit in Escambia County, Fla., along with other advocacy groups, and thought, “Now is the time for it all to come together. It’s a single-issue group. Our name is not very subtle: we are authors against book bans. And we can do a lot of things because we’re so micro-focused.” The ball got rolling quickly, he said. “In terms of the leadership group, I basically contacted a lot of my friends or other authors whom I’d had conversations with about this issue, including Maggie, and said, ‘Let’s all get together and solve this in a very organized fashion.’ ”

For her part, Tokuda-Hall said, “I came to this the way a lot of us do, by watching with horror as the news unfolds constantly and the number of book bans rises exponentially every year.” She recalled the eye-opening moment when she knew she had to get involved. “I visited Idaho in conjunction with the Idaho Library Association, and I gave a keynote there about the dangers of censorship and book banning. During that trip, I got a really intimate and terrifying view of what it looks like on the state level, where these conversations are being had and where this fight is happening.”

Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly

BBC 500 Words Story Competition

From The Oxford Owl:

As part of an ongoing programme of language research, the department of Children’s Dictionaries & Children’s Language Data at Oxford University Press has analysed children’s creative writing submitted to the BBC 500 WORDS story competition in 2023 and the results are out today!

Key Findings from the Report

• Themes around contemporary conflicts feature more prominently in the stories than in previous years.
• There is a shift away from the topic of Brexit, with very few mentions of this word (and none in a political context).
• There is a substantial increase in the frequency of AI in the stories – often in relation to a dangerous entity that could take over the world.
• The stories indicate an increasing awareness of neurodiversity, and conditions are often portrayed as a strength.
• Barbie occurs twice as frequently in stories from 2023 than 2020.
• TikTok is seen as a more established app and part of everyday life in 2023.
• Lioness(es) increased in frequency compared with 2020, and over half of the mentions were in reference to football. In 2020, almost all mentions of lioness(es) were references to the animal.
• The 2023 stories are the first to demonstrate a lived experience of Covid in the UK, and the pandemic is evidently still a reference point for children.

Insights from the 2023 stories

• The proportion of boys and girls who submitted a story in 2023 was 39% and 61%respectively. Excluding names, words that are used much more frequently by boys than girls include: Madrid, titan, league, Godzilla and champions. Meanwhile, words that are used much more frequently by girls than boys include: gymnastics, pony, foal, makeup and tiara.
• Words that appear much more often in stories from the 5-7 age category than the 8-11 age category include: mammy, baddy and teddybear. Meanwhile, words that are used much more frequently in stories by children in the older age group than the younger age group include intrigue, commander and murder. Adverbs, including practically, seemingly and sincerely, are also used more frequently in this age group.
• Words which had much higher frequency in stories from 2023 than 2020 include seasonal trends such as pumpkin and Halloween, footballers such as Haaland and Raya, and animals such as capybara and axolotl. Camilla is also used much more often in stories from 2023 – both in reference to the Queen and as a general character name.
• Meanwhile, words which had much higher frequency in stories from 2020 than 2023 include ps4, bushfire, trump, Brexit and coronavirus

Link to the rest at The Oxford Owl

ALA Reports Record Spike in Book Titles Challenged in 2023

From Publishers Weekly:

The American Library Association announced today that the number of unique titles targeted for censorship surged 65% in 2023 compared to 2022, once again hitting record levels.

In a release, ALA officials said that 4,240 unique book titles were reported challenged in schools and libraries in 2023, a sharp increase over 2022, when 2,571 unique titles were targeted for removal. ALA also reported 1,247 tracked challenges in 2023, which is down slightly from 1,269 challenges in 2022. But ALA officials stressed that the number does not reflect decreasing challenges, noting that prior to 2021, the vast majority of tracked challenges to library resources came from individuals seeking to remove or restrict access to a single book. Now, as result of an organized political movement and sharing book lists compiled by various groups, the overwhelming majority of tracked challenges come from groups and involve multiple titles.

“The reports from librarians and educators in the field make it clear that the organized campaigns to ban books aren’t over,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “Each demand to ban a book is a demand to deny each person’s constitutionally protected right to choose and read books that raise important issues and lift up the voices of those who are often silenced.”

In addition to the surge in unique titles challenged, ALA also reported:

  • The number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries increased by 92%, while school libraries saw an 11% increase.
  • Titles representing the voices and experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals made up 47% of those targeted in censorship attempts.
  • There were attempts to censor more than 100 titles in 17 states in 2023: Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly (located at 49 West 23rd Street, Ninth Floor, New York, NY)

While some of this is wrong-headedness on the part of parents, in other instances, parents may have reasonable objections about their children being exposed to highly-offensive content purchased with funds that originate with their tax dollars.

Who owns the community or local school library?

Are the librarians automatically entitled to decide what local children should read and what they should not read? If so, who granted librarians this entitlement?

On those occasions when PG checked books that were controversial as part of a community or school library, such books were invariably published by companies headquartered in New York City.

Is it surprising that Manhatten opinions about what children should read may differ from Omaha opinions or Boise opinions or Nashville opinions?

Is there a sense of entitlement among New York school book publishers that they know better or that they’re smarter than people who live elsewhere?

Book store owners across the nation certainly understand that just because New York trade publishers agree a new title is wonderful doesn’t mean that the book store’s customers will like it or will want to spend their own money to purchase the latest thing from NYC.

Cancel Culture Dominates Children’s Literature

From The Wall Street Journal:

In 2016 Scholastic canceled the children’s book “A Birthday Cake for George Washington” two weeks after publishing it. The book’s images of smiling enslaved people set off a social-media tsunami and a petition demanding cancellation. It didn’t matter that the illustrator was black, or that the editor, Andrea Pinkney, was black and also a towering figure in the children’s book world.

What mattered was that a social-media mob could force a major publisher to stop distributing a book. When the news broke, one of my editors phoned. I had a contract with him for a children’s book about slavery, and though he’d approved the final draft, he was nervous. It didn’t matter that my manuscript did the opposite of sugarcoating slavery. It didn’t matter that I had won awards for “Lillian’s Right to Vote,” one of many books I’d written on racial justice. My editor worried about public perception of a book “by a white male author, edited by a white male editor, about a white male slave owner.” Seventeen months later, after many pointless revisions, the contract was canceled. No book.

Scholastic’s cancellation marked the beginning of a brave new children’s book world, as detailed in PEN America’s 2023 report, “Booklash.” So-called progressive activists discovered they had power through social media, and they wielded it, assailing book after book with charges of offensiveness and demands for cancellation. Children’s publishers now live in fear of these activists, terrified of showing up on their radar with a book or author that could be deemed “problematic”—meaning out of alignment with the activists’ puritanical code.

According to that code, an author’s identity must match a book’s subject matter. Further, certain books can harm children, the activists believe, and books they deem harmful must be removed. If that sounds eerily similar to the right-wing activists’ mission, it’s because it is. The only difference is that while right-wing activists merely want certain books removed from particular schools, left-wing activists want the books they target annihilated.

In 2017 an initially much-praised book of mine about the atom bomb was attacked with the inaccurate charge of having “erased” American Indians. The social-media mob weighed in and the book went from getting rave reviews and being predicted as a Caldecott Medalist to fading into obscurity. I wrote an essay describing my experience, which was published in February 2019. Two months later, Debbie Reese, the blogger who had led the campaign, attacked me again—in her Arbuthnot Lecture, awarded to her by the powerful American Library Association—for not withdrawing my book after what she called her “criticism” of it.

One month later, I wound up on a sort of blacklist on a blog called Reading While White. The contributors—liberal white people who call out other liberal white people for racism—accused me and some other white authors, with no evidence, of “racism—in words, works, and deeds.”

That same year, Time Magazine named one of my books, “The Sad Little Fact,” a Best Book. The Washington Post named my biography of Justice Thurgood Marshall a Best Book. Yet since then I’ve amassed a pile of rejections on a wide range of topics. Editors tell me they can’t publish anything by me about “people of color or women”—the subjects of my most popular works. Editors say publishers mainly want books about “marginalized people,” but the authors’ identities must match the subject matter. My former main editor praised my writing but suggested that if he gave me a contract he would be taking away a “slot” from “previously underrepresented minorities.”

It is mind-blowing that this happened to me—an author who devoted his career to promoting diversity long before it became publishers’ singular focus. And it’s ironic that most of the people behind the pile-ons, petitions and cancellations are white—and privileged. Even more ironic: Many victims of cancel culture are “previously underrepresented minorities”—nonwhite, gay or lesbian authors, who have tended to self-cancel after being targeted by social-media pile-ons. Among them are Kosoko Jackson, E.E. Charlton-Trujillo and Amélie Wen Zhao.

This isn’t progress. The campaign to bring diversity to children’s books must be separated from cancel culture, from social-media mobs, from the vitriolic intolerance toward any dissenting opinions that veer at all from the new orthodoxy.

I say this as a lifelong liberal, whose books have been removed from library shelves in right-wing school districts.

Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal

The author of the WSJ piece is Jonah Winter, an author of very popular children’s books.

Here’s a link to Mr. Winter’s books.

Following are some of Mr. Winter’s most popular books. PG is going to buy some of them for his grandchildren.

Many students have still not regained pandemic-era losses in reading, math

From ABC:

Elementary and middle school students have only made up some of the losses in math and reading they experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new report finds.

For the report, published Wednesday, a collaborative team at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University and The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University, looked at the first year of regular testing between spring 2022 and spring 2023 for school districts in 30 states.

Overall, students managed to recover about one-third of the original loss in math and one-quarter of the loss in reading. While these gains are historic, students are still not where they should be, the researchers found.

“Both of those gains were large by historical standards, but the gains in average achievement are masking the dramatic widening in achievement that happened between 2019 and 2022, and just the failure of many of the high poverty districts to catch up,” Dr. Thomas Kane, co-author of the report and faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research, told ABC News.

When broken down by subject, only students in Alabama returned to pre-pandemic achievement levels in math, meaning levels seen in 2019, the report found. However, students in 17 states are still one-third behind 2019 levels in math.

. . . .

The report’s authors say that districts would need at least another year of recovery in math and two more years in reading for students to catch up to pre-pandemic level achievements.

. . . .

The report also found that in many states, the recovery of math and reading losses has been led by wealthier districts, including those in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Kane said in Massachusetts, high-poverty districts didn’t just fail to catch up but lost further ground between spring 2022 and spring 2023 so the improvement came from the higher-income suburbs, which he called “disappointing” and “concerning.”

. . . .

“During the pandemic, many high-income families relied on private tutors to maintain their students’ achievement while lower-income families didn’t have the resources to do the same,” he told ABC News. “A lot of school-based interventions meant to close the gap were too little, too late. What we really need are strong early childhood interventions.”

Link to the rest at ABC

Judge Blocks Key Provisions of Iowa Book Banning Law

From Publishers Weekly:

In yet another legal victory for freedom to read advocates, a federal judge has blocked two key portions of SF 496, a recently passed Iowa state law that sought to ban books with sexual content from Iowa schools and to bar classroom discussion of gender identity and sexuality for students below the seventh grade.

In a 49-page opinion and order, judge Stephen Locher criticized the law as “incredibly broad” and acknowledged that it has already resulted in the removal of “of hundreds of books from school libraries, including, among others, nonfiction history books, classic works of fiction, Pulitzer Prize–winning contemporary novels, books that regularly appear on Advanced Placement exams, and even books designed to help students avoid being victimized by sexual assault.”

Specifically, Locher preliminarily enjoined two provisions challenged in two separate but parallel lawsuits. Regarding the law’s ban on books with any depictions of sex acts, Locher found that the law’s “sweeping restrictions” are “unlikely to satisfy the First Amendment under any standard of scrutiny.” In a rebuke, Locher said he was “unable to locate a single case upholding the constitutionality of a school library restriction even remotely similar to Senate File 496.”

Locher said that the law’s “underlying message” is that there is “no redeeming value to any such book even if it is a work of history, self-help guide, award-winning novel, or other piece of serious literature,” adding that with the law state lawmakers had sought to impose “a puritanical ‘pall of orthodoxy’ over school libraries.”

Furthermore, Locher suggested that the law was a solution in search of a problem. “The State Defendants have presented no evidence that student access to books depicting sex acts was creating any significant problems in the school setting, much less to the degree that would give rise to a ‘substantial and reasonable governmental interest’ justifying across-the-board removal,” he wrote. “Instead, at most, the State Defendants presented evidence that some parents found the content of a small handful of books to be objectionable.”

As to the law’s restrictions on instruction relating to gender identity and sexual orientation, Locher sought to clarify two “severe” misunderstandings about what the law actually says. First, nothing in the law act restricts the ability of school officials to engage with issues of gender identity and sexual orientation with students in grade seven and above, he held, whether in the classroom or outside of it. “To the extent school districts, teachers, or students have been interpreting the law otherwise, they are simply wrong,” Locher wrote.

As for students in grade six and below, Locher noted that the plain text of the law actually doesn’t distinguish between “cisgender or transgender identity or gay or straight relationships.” While opponents of SF 496 have often described the effort as a “don’t say gay” or “don’t say trans” bill, based on the plain language of the statute, Locher said, it is actually a “don’t say anything” bill.

“The statute is therefore content-neutral but so wildly overbroad that every school district and elementary school teacher in the State has likely been violating it since the day the school year started,” Locher held. “This renders the statute void for vagueness under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because the State will have unfettered discretion to decide when to enforce it and against whom, thus making it all but impossible for a reasonable person to know what will and will not lead to punishment.”

Still, Locher was quick to acknowledge the intent of the law, acknowledging that both the plaintiffs and the state agree that the law was “designed to prohibit discussion of homosexuality and transgenderism.” The problem, Locher said, “is that the Court cannot interpret Senate File 496 as targeting transgender identities and homosexual relationships without substituting the Court’s own choice of words for the ones chosen by the Legislature. This the Court cannot do.”

Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly

Taylor Swift breaks Little Golden Books records too

From Rolling Stone:

STARTING THE SWIFTIES young! A new kids book about Taylor Swift has returned to the bestsellers charts on Amazon, once again proving the singer’s reach knows no time — or age — limit.

Taylor Swift: A Little Golden Book Biography is the latest release from the “Little Golden Book” series, which introduces kids to famous entertainers, proverbs and historical figures through colorful books that bear the iconic golden binding on the side.

Released in May, the Little Golden Book about Taylor Swift quickly shot to number one on the “Best Children’s Biographies” list when it was first announced and it back at number one following Swift’s Eras Tour movie release.

. . . .

The Taylor Swift children’s book tracks the singer’s career, from performing at local fairs and festivals in rural Pennsylvania, to signing a record deal in Nashville, to touring and meeting fans all around the world.

Along with a biographical timeline, the book also explains some of Swift’s favorite Easter eggs and fan moments, like her love for the number 13, and the meet-and-greets she’s held over the years.

. . . .

The 24-page book is written by Wendy Loggia, a self-professed “longtime admirer” of Swift’s.

Link to the rest at Rolling Stone

PG understands that Ms. Swift’s biography has broken all sorts of Golden Book sales records. He apologizes for missing this shockwave earlier.

Manufacturing Problems with School and Library Books to Cash in on Solutions

From Book Riot:

As we race toward the end of 2023 and book bans continue to be a major reality across the country, it seems worth pausing to think about some of the trends across the landscape this year. We have seen shifts in the kinds of books being targeted, thanks to the work of PEN America, and we have seen a shift in the targets of censors more broadly from individual titles (those still happen!) to book distributors with the Texas READER Act and book fairs. While bigotry and power are two key themes of why censors are targeting books, one thing we should be looking at and addressing by name is this: there is a lot of money to be made with book bans.

I’ve talked at length for years about how book banners have found this a prime opportunity to point to wasteful spending of tax money. If they can complain about books in the schools, they can complain their tax money was wasted on the books, then that their tax money was wasted on the review process, and then they can take these claims to sympathetic politicians in their state to demand voucher programs, which then further defund and hard public institutions. They own the entire cycle. We haven’t touched on how many tens of thousands of dollars have been wasted on policies and how they’ve been translated at the public library level (see Hamilton East Public Library’s review of all their YA books, followed by the abrupt ending of that policy).

But a new and frankly unsurprising trend in 2023 is that private entities have stepped in to offer solutions to banned books. These are not solutions to end book bans, but rather ways to continue living in a system that permits books to be banned for lies perpetrated by right-wing parental right groups (no matter how many times book banners push the same handful of images from Gender Queer on social media or in school board meetings, those don’t meet the legal definition of obscenity; they just make you look incredibly ignorant about how books, literacy, and the law work). In 2023, book banners have started to cash in on their own lies, once again owning the entire outrage cycle and its money from start to finish.

Who has been behind this? I’ve already covered two of the biggest, most marketed to date here: BookmarkED, an app designed to “help schools and parents with book bans,” and the Brave Books-now-SkyTree book fairs designed to offer an alternative to Scholastic. The first was created by an individual who was advocating for a book ban bill at the Texas Senate this year. Convenient that he would be able to really push his new app as a solution to the bill. The second, of course, has put Kirk Cameron and a cadre of right-wing “children’s books” at the center of discourse over naughty books available in school and public libraries (and hey, even if the storytime events that Brave Books coordinated in August at public libraries across the U.S. were free, they were certainly getting plenty of press and attention for the publisher and their books, both during the event and in the coverage leading up to it — the tone of that coverage didn’t matter, since they got their goals into people’s mouths).

Link to the rest at Book Riot

PG suggests that the author of the OP has gone more than a bit overboard on the topic.

PG doubts that BookmarkedED and SkyTree Book Fairs are part of some evil right-wing conspiracy to make money off of school book fairs so much as they are a practical solution for school administrators trying to avoid angry parents who don’t think some books being promoted by Scholastic are right for their children.

Scholastic is the world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books, NASDAQ: SCHL, and is headquartered in New York City.

New York City is, of course, part of an entirely different and much smaller world than Cleveland, Topeka, Atlanta, Phoenix, Kansas City, and similarly populated urban, suburban and rural areas across the United States.

PG was reminded of one of his friends who was an executive in the Chicago office of a large advertising agency headquartered in New York City. PG’s friend was constantly aggravated by the stupid advertisements cooked up in NYC that were entirely tone-deaf and useless for selling products to anyone in the United States who lived more than fifty miles from NYC.

Finally, countless would-be authors will understand the NYC defacto book bans created and enforced by the many traditional publishers against authors of all sorts of books who conclude, “This isn’t quite right for us.”

Perhaps the author of the OP believes that librarians, schools, and other book purchasers don’t have the right to say, “This isn’t quite right for us.”

In the battle over books, who gets to decide what’s age-appropriate at libraries?

From National Public Radio:

For months, Carolyn Harrison and a small band of activists have been setting up folding tables with an array of what they call “bad books” outside the public library in Idaho Falls, Idaho. As Harrison, co-founder of the group Parents Against Bad Books sees it, the best way to convince people that the library is stocking inappropriate books is to show them.

“These two books are in the library, if you don’t believe it!” Harrison says to one passerby.

“It’s very graphic, very detailed,” offers Halli Stone, another member of the group.

They point out depictions of what they call obscene sexual encounters, catching many library patrons by surprise.

“Oooh, the graphic pictures!” exclaims one woman. “They’re taking away children’s innocence. They just don’t care.”

. . . .

It’s one of many efforts around the U.S. to change how decisions are made about which books libraries should have on shelves and in which section of the library they belong.

The process of classifying books can be somewhat inconsistent. Books usually get an initial designation from authors and publishers. Then, professional book reviewers usually weigh in with their own age-bracket recommendation, and distributors and booksellers can do the same. But ultimately, local library staff make the final call about the books they buy and where they should go.

Harrison wants to change that process by giving parents a voice in that final decision, along with the library staff. But she says libraries are resistant to the idea.

“They’ve told us here that ‘Oh no, you can’t have parents involved. You must have experts choosing books for the children,'” Harrison says. “That makes no sense. Parents are the primary stakeholders for children.”

. . . .

PABB also keeps a list of what they call “52 Bad Books.” It includes George M. Johnson’s memoir, All Boys Aren’t Blue, which contains some explicit descriptions of sexual scenes. But as is the case with most books in question, one person’s trash is another’s treasure.

“I found it very enlightening,” says Idaho Falls Public Library Director Robert Wright. As he sees it, All Boys Aren’t Blue is critical to young people’s development, especially those struggling with issues around sexual identity. “To me, it was a story of a young boy who felt maybe different, but the story that came through to me was how much his family supported him and loved him regardless,” Wright says.

Link to the rest at National Public Radio

40 Years Ago, One Underrated Chapter Book Helped Kids Talk About Trauma

From Fatherly:

It’s an undeniable fact that Beverly Cleary was a huge part of the way several generations of kids learned to read. She has been since Henry Huggins arrived in 1950, and remains a top pick for voracious young readers beyond her passing in 2021 at the age of 104. Library shelves forever enshrine her Ramona and The Mouse and The Motorcycle books, rightfully revered as timeless classics. Despite being generations apart from when they were first penned, children continue to connect with Cleary’s earnest style that never forgets to throw in some laughs. Among her dozens of books, there’s one underrated story that can be viewed as the most empathetic book the author ever wrote, covering a topic rarely tread upon in kids’ literature written during that era.

First published four decades ago, in 1983, Dear Mr. Henshaw centers on a boy from California named Leigh Botts, who aims to be a writer when he grows up. Beginning in second grade, the youngster starts a correspondence with famous children’s book author Boyd Henshaw, which continues over several years. During this time, Leigh is coping with his parents’ recent divorce, trying to make sense of the confusing emotions caused by this trauma.

Mr. Henshaw responds to Leigh’s sixth-grade assignment to write a letter to an author with his own set of ten questions. The aspiring author slowly and reluctantly answers probing inquiries like “Who are you?” or “What is your family like?” As time marches forward, Leigh discovers he enjoys writing to Mr. Henshaw, and the letters become a form of therapy, eventually transitioning into a personal diary addressed to “Pretend Mr. Henshaw.” Leigh finds comfort in this safe space, openly addressing his fears and concerns, like why his dad doesn’t say he misses him when they talk on the phone (if he remembers to call), and how Leigh doesn’t like being home alone after his mom leaves for work.

While Leigh responds to his correspondence, the readers of Dear Mr. Henshaw never see a single word from the adult author. The character is merely a guide to Leigh opening up, processing his feelings, and permitting himself to have this outlet. Between his time writing letters and the lessons from his teachers, Leigh’s abilities as a writer simultaneously mature while his emotional vocabulary grows. By the end, he’s able to face his negligent father, understand his mother’s pain, and realize the divorce wasn’t his fault, while also having his first taste of success as a published author. No matter how hard he wishes, Leigh’s world will never be the way it was, but like the butterflies he finds during his walks along the shore (similar to the real Monarch Butterfly Grove in Pismo Beach), Leigh grows into something new and different, comfortable with who he’s become.

According to Beverly Cleary, Dear Mr. Henshaw is the most serious book she wrote during her lifetime. The story came about because two different boys wrote letters to her around the same time, asking why she hadn’t written about a boy whose parents were divorced. The spark was lit, and the book flowed from her head onto paper.

Cleary’s books were not typically as solitary as Dear Mr. Henshaw, and rarely delve into serious trauma. It’s an outlier with its somber tone and grounded situation, although Cleary’s signature humor from across her catalog of work is present. Leigh doesn’t live in a bustling cul-de-sac surrounded by kids, but rather isolated in “a really little house,” with his neighbors being a gas station and a thrift shop. He’s lethargic to find meaning in anything that goes on around him, trapped between unfamiliar spaces, physically and emotionally. After he adds writing to his routine, his sense of abandonment fades to allow personal growth that even adult readers can admire and aspire towards.

Dear Mr. Henshaw covers many of the anxieties children feel during a divorce. It’s not unusual for them to go through their own makeshift stages of grief, ranging from being mad and sad, denying the events are real while hoping everything will return to how things were before, and eventually accepting the new status quo. Kids’ can react to this outwardly through anger and tantrums, while other children will internalize it and never show what they’re truly feeling. Cleary reassures the reader whatever they’re going through is nothing to feel ashamed about, and one can heal from the invisible wounds on their heart.

Divorce is rarely an easy transaction, no matter how old you are. Processing the good memories alongside the bad is a difficult experience, and often a source of confusion and frustration. Dear Mr. Henshaw encourages the reader to not be afraid to explore what hurts them because the only way to grow is to face them in a healthy and introspective way.

Despite earning a Newberry Medal when it was released, Dear Mr. Henshaw remains overshadowed by Cleary’s more popular and light-hearted stories.

Link to the rest at Fatherly

Scholastic Says They’ll Walk Back Their Separate Diversity Collection for Book Fairs

From Book Riot:

After over a month of hearing from librarians, educators, authors, and other anti-censorship advocates, Scholastic says they will be discontinuing their separate “Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice,” collections at their Book Fairs. This case of 64 books included BIPOC stories and LGBTQ+ stories and in order to get it included in Book Fairs, those running the events at their schools were required to opt-in to the collection. It was not standard issue.

Ellie Berger, the President of Scholastic Trade Publishing, stated the cases will be discontinued in January and emphasized the company’s commitment to sharing these stories with readers.

The October 24, 2023, statement comes weeks after the company dropped an update on Friday afternoon, shared via Twitter, meant to address “rumors” about a “bigot button” implemented in this season’s Book Fairs. It is a complete backpedal, as the initial comment on the diverse book case stated the company made the decision because there were so many different discriminatory laws across the country that they needed to put the responsibility of withholding inclusive books into the hands of the educators within these communities. Nowhere in the initial statement did Scholastic address the work they were doing to push back against book ban laws.

Link to the rest at Book Riot

A Treatise on the State of Middle Grade and Young Adult Publishing Today

From School Library Journal:

I consistently view sales reports in Publisher’s Weekly and book sales are generally trending down for all of 2023 in almost all categories. Middle grade (ages 8-12) and Young Adult (historically classified as 12 and up, but often now classified as 14 and up) have been consistently down and are causing a lot of industry concern among publishers, book sellers and youth librarians. When I talk with my peers, it seems like a lot of us are also seeing sluggish circulation numbers as well. The current state of publishing for tweens and teens can look bleak.

I spent a lot of time – too much time? – thinking about these sales figures, talking with librarian friends both off and online, and just ruminating in general about why book sales and often book circulation is down in these age categories. Combine this with recent troubling reports that kids are reading less for pleasure and that reading scores in general are down, and there’s a lot for publishers, book sellers, teachers and librarians to ruminate upon. And I know that we are because I see the discussions happening every where.

So here are some of my ruminations about the state of publishing, book sales, reading and libraries.

Some general thoughts about current issues in publishing and book sales in general:

The 2.7% decline in the first half of 2023 followed a 6.6% drop in the first six months of 2022 compared to 2021; unit sales were 387.5 million in the first half of 2021, 8.5% higher than in the same period this year. In taking the longer view back to prepandemic times, units were up 12% in the first half of this year compared to 2019.”

  1. The cost and supply of paper continues to be of concern and have been impacting a lot of decision making at the publishing level.
  2. Though they have slowed, like all industries, supply chain issues continue to impact every part of getting books into the hands of patrons; from shipping to having enough workers in warehouses to pull and fulfill orders there are elements at play that are making things sluggish on the distribution end.
  3. The internet (fan fiction, self-publishing, Amazon) presents incredible challenges and leads to over-saturation and competition in the market. In addition, discovery is harder and many book titles just aren’t available to school and public libraries because of purchasing policies. For good or bad, many items aren’t even available for purchase at school and public libraries because they must use certain vendors, have professional reviews, etc.
  4. Book prices continue to go up while income continues to decline. Especially when you consider the fact that kids don’t have any income and the ending of Covid era policies plunged our youth back into poverty at alarming rates, the reality that is that as book prices soar, kids and their families ability to purchase books is declining. Housing and groceries come before books, and many families can’t get either at this point.
  5. There is an ongoing movement from print to digital, accelerated in some ways by the pandemic. This presents many new challenges for libraries of any type as well as consumers. The digital divide is real and presents its own issues. In addition, you have authors making exclusive deals with Audible which means that school and public libraries literally can not provide access to many titles.
  6. There hasn’t been a mega-bestseller since the Harry Potter series. Harry Potter books sold in the tens of millions, while last year’s bestselling author Colleen Hoover only sold 2.75 million copies. I personally am no longer a fan of JK Rowling, but I was a librarian during the height of the Harry Potter/Twilight/YA Dystopian era and there is no denying the impact those titles had on reading, book sales, and library support and circulation. We could really use with another mega bestselling series that drives new readers into the libraries the way this era did.

Some general thoughts about current issues in Middle Grade literature:

“According to recent BookScan sales data for middle grade books quoted in Publishers Weekly, middle grade book sales are down 16% overall.”

  1. As YA ages up (the average age of a MC in a YA novel is now age 17 – see note below), many long-term YA authors are now jumping to writing Middle Grade, which has led to some of the following:
    1. MG novels are now ageing up, the typical age of a MC in a MG novel is now 12 and 13
    2. MG novels are growing increasingly longer, which can be a real hindrance to many readers. We don’t need all the books to be shorter, but we need more shorter books to be an option.
  2. Meanwhile, just as YA hasn’t had a break out hit (again, see note below), MG has not had a new break out hit for a while now. While Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Dogman continue to do well, there have been no new MG break out hits in several years. I’m thankful for those consistent series that get youth in the door, but I would give a lot for some new, energizing break out hits. This is a theme you will see repeated in this treatise.
  3. MG novels are widely being challenged and that negative press is causing a lot of stigma and backlash. As chat rooms and library board meetings fill up with a small handful of people calling librarians Marxist communist groomers, there is a growing unease among some parts of the public about school and public libraries, publishing, and books in general. Books that have been in our libraries for years, sometimes decades, now have targets on their backs. The idea that all press is good press turns out to be a lie; the truth is books and libraries are being dragged through the mud and it’s not good for business, or for the mental health of those of use who have spent decades advocating for kids and reading. I can not over emphasize the negative end result this is having on our industry.
  4. The way reading is taught in schools has resulted in what is termed the “decline at 9”, with a noticeable trend of tweens no longer reading for fun. In addition, they often don’t have the free time to read. Add in competition like Tik-Tok (and there is no MG Booktok with the same success as YA Booktok), and you have a megastorm of lack of interest and availability to read.

There is some hope in the graphic novel market, which is still popular with MG readers. But as it grows more popular, it grows more flooded and it is hard to find those breakout hits that get kids reading.

“Only one category in juvenile fiction had an increase, with sales of animals books up 14%. The largest decline came in the sci-fi/fantasy/magic area, where sales fell 11.3%. With the exception of holidays/festivals/religion, sales in all juvenile nonfiction subcategories fell in the period, with both history/sports/people/places and education/reference/language posting declines of more than 11%.” (Source: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/92735-book-sales-continue-to-slow-down-in-first-half-of-2023.html)

Some general thoughts about current issues in YA/Teen literature:

“With young adult fiction the only major category posting a decline, unit sales of print books increased 4.2% in the week ended Mar. 11, 2023, over the comparable week in 2022, at outlets that report to Circana BookScan.”

“Young adult fiction sales are in decline, and it’s a hot topic in publishing, where the internet is awash with questions of why.”

. . . .

So what are people – and here I include myself – saying?

  1. There has not been a break out hit since The Hate U Give, released in 2017. There are some breakout hits with Karen McManus and Holly Jackson, and YA Book Tok has definitely helped the market.
  2. The market is oversaturated and there are fewer “big name” YA authors like the early 2000s/2010s. The bonus to all the new names publishing is that we are getting a lot of great new debuts and with that comes a lot more much needed diversity. The downside is that we have fewer of those authors that teens are coming in and asking for by name. There are, always, exceptions.
  3. Many long term YA authors are migrating to adult or middle grade (see note above). This effects that name brand recognition I just talked about. It can also be confusing from a marketing and promotion point of view. I’m not saying that authors can’t or shouldn’t dabble in multiple age ranges, I just want to acknowledge that it presents some challenges.
  4. Today’s MG novel is what 1990s YA used to be; most current YA is written for ages 14 and up and the average age of the main character is 17. Both MG and YA is being aged up. In the mean time, readers ages 13 through 15 are left in a book wasteland wondering where and what they should be reading. We are missing an entire age group in the current trends and that will have long lasting implications for everyone.
  5. YA is being publicly challenged and a lot of what sells/circulates is now being targeted. While over half of the NYT Teen Bestseller list for almost all of 2023 has been LGBTQ, LGBTQ titles are the most targeted by book banners. I can not emphasize enough how much damage I think book banning is doing to the entire zeitgeist. It’s unconscionable what is happening right now.
  6. The current book cover trend is highly illustrative and indistinguishable from both middle grade and adult romance. Readers often can not tell by the cover who the target audience is. Whether we like it or not, covers are the first gateway to books and people do in fact judge a book by its cover, but today’s cover don’t make it very clear who the target audience is.
  7. Adult authors like Colleen Hoover and those mentioned on TikTok (BookTok) are more popular with teen readers right now than many YA authors. This deserves its own lengthy article, but it’s just a bullet point here. Teens have always read adult books and that in and of itself is not the issue. The point is that they have fewer age appropriate books that speak to their current lives and issues to choose from, and reading is part of what helps us process and understand our world.
  8. There are virtually zero books for readers ages 13-15. I know I have mentioned this of, but it really is a big part of the problem. It’s a huge, huge problem. I obviously feel pretty strongly about it.
  9. YA books are often published in long, continuing series (typically fantasy at the moment) and the books are long in length and too heavy for backpacks (and too expensive). Again, not all books need to be shorter, but we need more shorter options. And please more stand alone titles. When I drop my kid off at high school she is just one of the many, many teens I see carrying 2 backpacks throughout school all day and yes, book size is an issue.
  10. The movement away from paperback has made it harder for teens to easily carry and afford books, especially since most schools no longer offer access to lockers so those books have to be carried all day long in backpacks. I feel so strongly about this that I have also mentioned it multiple times.
  11. Moving to digital allows for more privacy as people can’t see what you are reading, an important point in today’s age of book banning especially. I’m a huge advocate for digital access, but it does not come without it’s own issues, including price, availability and the reality of the digital divide.

Link to the rest at School Library Journal

PG notes that the author included a large number of links in the OP that lead to further information regarding her various topics.

As a reminder, PG virtually always (99.999% of the time) removes any links in the sections of various articles he excerpts here. His principal reason for doing this is to encourage those interested in learning more about the subject of the post will be further motivated to click the link to the original item he includes in all his excerpt posts.

The Emotional (And Financial) Toll of Book Bans: Book Censorship News

From Book Riot:

USA Today posted a data visualization of the state of banned books in the country for Banned Books Week. If you’ve been following censorship news, none of it will come as a surprise, but seeing just how much challenges increased from 2019 to 2021 is staggering.

. . . .

Booksellers in Texas are in an uncomfortable limbo with House Bill 900, which would — among other things — require vendors to rate every single title ever sold to a public school for sexual content and submit those ratings to the government. Texas booksellers, alongside other groups, have challenged the bill. It is hard to see how it would be physically possible for any bookstore to uphold, given the number of titles they stock, even setting aside that ratings are up to interpretation and would vary wildly from vendor to vendor.

A judge’s order blocked the law, but an administrative stay has overruled that, meaning HB 900 is still in effect — despite a judge ruling it unconstitutional. Federal judge Alan D. Albright called it a “web of unconstitutionally vague requirements.” He went on,

“The government has the power to restrict the ability of its school district as to which books it may purchase. The exercise of these powers must, of course, comply with the requirements of the constitution, but these are powers that should be exercised by the state directly, not by compelling third parties to perform it or risk losing any opportunity to engage in commerce with the school districts.”

This administrative stay, which is usually used as a temporary measure to uphold the status quo, applies indefinitely, meaning booksellers have no idea when it will be overturned.

. . . .

Librarians Are Leaving the Profession Over Stress, Threats, and Accusations

In December 2022, Rockwell Falls, NY, youth services director Amanda Hoffman let the library board know that they were planning to do a Drag Story Hour in April. Bringing it up to the board wasn’t a requirement, but she decided to give them a heads up, knowing there would be some backlash. They were excited about the event.

By the time April came around, though, the board claimed they had been “in the dark” about the Drag Story Hour — despite meeting minutes showing Hoffman informed them. The public response was so vitriolic that the event was canceled, but that wasn’t enough. It started a cascade of criticism and investigations into the library. Hoffman was accused of being a pedophile and a child molester. “I had someone pray for me over the phone for Satan to leave my body,” she shared with The Post Star. She got a call from an FBI agent saying there had been a bomb threat against the library.

As Hoffman faced more and more harassment at work — on Facebook, over the phone, and in person — she begged the library board, the community, and even the police for help, but none came. Eventually, the stress manifested into extreme vertigo that landed Hoffman in the hospital.

Today, the library is temporarily shuttered, and Hoffman has resigned.

This is just one example of what librarians are being expected to put up with right now. The job was already demanding and underpaid, especially considering that it requires a Master’s degree. Now, they’re expected to also endure bomb threats and accusations of pedophilia. It’s untenable.

Link to the rest at Book Riot

PG is increasingly more dismayed and disgusted by the state of civil speech in the United States (he can’t speak for other nations on this subject.)

In the United States, public schools are financed through local and state taxes plus some federal funding (usually around 8-10% of a typical public school’s budget).

Public funding brings with it public oversight, typically in the form of a local school board picked in local elections (although it’s not unusual for school boards in smaller communities to run unopposed). This is one of the most basic public offices in most parts of the US and one that has a significant impact on local citizens with school-age children.

Typically, the school board selects a Superintendent of Public Schools, who hires Principals as the on-location chief executive of a given public school. Principals typically hire school teachers for their schools.

In some suburban communities, school board service is sometimes used as a springboard to other elected offices, mayor, city council, etc.

Traditionally, in most communities, there was very little intense political disagreement about the operation of public schools. This was certainly the case in the small public schools PG attended in ancient times.

Obviously, as the OP indicates, in some places, the operation of public schools has been affected by larger political and social schisms in the populace.

PG suspects that sex has always been a preoccupation for a significant number of teenage school students. Preoccupation accompanies the wide range of physical changes that characterize this age group. Social controls are the main ways teen-age hormones are kept under societal norms, backed by laws setting the bounds of sexual relations between teenagers.

Same-sex attraction has also been a constant in the lives of some teenagers. Traditionally, social norms prohibited any expression of this attraction for a teen-age student, backed by juvenile court sanctions.

Class discussion, books, and school lessons regarding same-sex attraction was traditionally so out-of-bounds that it was almost never mentioned. This is characteristic of the world in which most of today’s parents grew up in.

PG isn’t certain how the expectation of teachers, trained in many of today’s colleges and universities that consenting adulthood (or near adulthood) is the only reasonable constraint on sexual behavior between individuals will comfortably fit with the concerns of many of today’s parents.

Children’s Books Edition: PRH’s ‘Banned Wagon’ Rolls Sunday

From Publishing Perspectives:

At Frankfurter Buchmesse (October 18 to 22), programming on tap in many parts of the world’s largest book publishing trade fair reflects the fact that politically driven censorship–frequently targeting children and young adult readers (YA)–is much on the minds of book professionals this year.
Despite the fact that the international sweep of right-wing censorship has recently surfaced in young people’s literature and textbook assaults–in Brazil’s State of São Paulo; in the vast educational system of Mexico; and in the Caribbean’s Dominican Republic–the waves of book bannings powered largely by organized activists in the United States have drawn sharp and understandable attention.

. . . .

Hearing the call, Penguin Random House–the world’s largest and most internationally positioned of trade publishers– is gassing up something new: its “Banned Wagon: A Vehicle for Change.”

The goal is to take the debate right into the American South during Banned Books Week. Putting its fuel budget where its “Read Banned Books” message is, the vehicle not only will showcase a section of 12 frequently challenged books but will also distribute free copies of those books to attendees in each of the cities in which the tour “sits down.”

Link to the rest at Publishing Perspectives

New York City is lecturing to the unwashed masses occupying the rest of the country so they’ll understand they need listen to their betters and radically change their benighted values and beliefs. Right now.

Ariana Grande, Guillermo del Toro, Padma Lakshmi and More Sign Open Letter Denouncing Book Bans and Their “Chilling Effect” 

From The Hollywood Reporter:

Ariana Grande, Guillermo del Toro, Padma Lakshmi, Roxane Gay, Gabrielle Union, Sandra Cisneros, Amanda Gorman, Margaret Cho and Ron Perlman are among the signatories of an open letter calling on creative communities in Hollywood and beyond to leverage their voices to stop book bans.

Upwards of 175 actors, musicians, authors, comedians, reality stars, models, media personalities, academics, activists and more have signed the open letter spearheaded by Reading Rainbow host LeVar Burton and published Tuesday via public advocacy organization and political action committee MoveOn Political Action.

The letter encourages signatories and readers to address challenges at the local level across U.S. school districts, while calling out book bans as “restrictive behavior” that is “antithetical to free speech and expression.” It also underscores the “chilling effect” these bans can have “on the broader creative field.”

“We cannot stress enough how these censorious efforts will not end with book bans,” the letter continues. “It’s only a matter of time before regressive, suppressive ideologues will shift their focus toward other forms of art and entertainment, to further their attacks and efforts to scapegoat marginalized communities, particularly BIPOC and LGBTQ+ folks.”

The letter concludes that signatories will “refuse to remain silent as one creative field is subjected to oppressive bans” and urges artists to “band together, because a threat to one form of art is a threat to us all.”

“It’s embarrassing that we are banning books in this country, in this culture, in this day and age. And it’s dangerous that a handful of individuals are deciding that any book with Black and queer people is divisive,” said Burton, executive producer of the 2023 documentary The Right to Read. “We are calling on everyone to join us in raising their voices to uphold artistic freedom, embrace multicultural history and put a stop once and for all to book bans.”

Link to the rest at The Hollywood Reporter

PG won’t opine at length as he has done before on this topic, but he does think that public schools have a right to select or not select books for students as the teachers and school administrators deem best for their students.

In making such selections, it is reasonable for teachers and administrators to consider the opinions of the parents of those students. After all, these are publicly funded schools, and those parents, as well as the rest of the community, pay school taxes to support them.

It’s a long distance between places like Beverly Hills, West Hollywood and Santa Monica and states like Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma. Having known people living in both of those geographic areas, PG can assure one and all that majority opinions about what sort of books children should and should not read diverge quite substantially from opinions in the other area.

PG ended up opining at length and apologizes for misleading any who relied on the truth of his earliest paragraph.

Judge Sets Second Hearing on Motion to Block Texas Book Rating Law

From Publishers Weekly:

On August 18, Federal Judge Alan D. Albright heard the first round of oral arguments in Austin, Tex., on a motion to block HB 900, Texas’s controversial new book rating law. But with Texas attorneys filing a motion to dismiss the case just days earlier, on August 16, Albright said he would need more time before ruling on either motion. The judge has set a second hearing for August 28, adding that he would rule before the law is set to take effect on September 1.

The plaintiffs in the case fighting HB 900 include two Texas bookstores—Austin’s BookPeople and Houston’s Blue Willow Bookshop—together with the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Dubbed the READER Act by supporters (an acronym for “Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resource”), the bill was signed by Texas governor Greg Abbott on June 12. Among its provisions, the law requires book vendors to review books—including both new books and books it has previously sold—and to rate them for sexual content under a vaguely articulated standard. Books rated “sexually explicit” (if the book includes material deemed “patently offensive” by unspecified community standards) would be banned from Texas schools. Books rated “sexually relevant,” (if the books portrays any kind of sexual conduct) would be available only with written parental consent.

As articulated in their July 25 complaint, the plaintiffs argued that the law is an unconstitutional restraint on the freedom to read and that the law imposes an untenable burden on the book vendors tasked with rating millions of books. As evidence of this, the plaintiffs said that a survey of six school districts in Texas revealed more than six million books and items in circulation that would require rating. Texas has more than 1,250 independent school districts; Spring Branch Independent School District in Houston determined that the process for the district to review a single book required 220 staff hours and cost a total of $30,000.

Texas attorneys opened the August 18 arguments by reiterating their argument that the plaintiffs lack standing to challenge the law, asserting that there was no “economic injury” to the plaintiffs, who “feared too many things.” The harm was purely “speculative,” said the attorneys. Furthermore, the state argued that any prospective injury should be attributable to the individual school districts deciding which books to purchase, not the state. And finally, the state argued that the law does not compel or restrict speech as the plaintiffs argue. “If this bill didn’t exist,” the state argued, “you cannot sue the school district to force them to buy books from the vendor.”

In his questions, Albright pointed out that the law as currently written does appear vague and unclear. He focused on the plaintiffs’ inability to “get relief” from the school districts should books be rated incorrectly. In addition, he noted that the law must address the future implications of a law, in this case, the potential for financial injury.

Albright also offered several implied criticisms of the law in the course of seeking clarification, asking whether or not John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men would be deemed obscene because it contains a rape, and subsequently E. Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain and the Bible, both of which have explicit sexual references. He also asked after the fate of books depicting paintings by Caravaggio (the judge’s “favorite painter,” he said) and Michelangelo. Albright acknowledged that there were certainly works that could easily be deemed “sexually relevant,” but the part of the law that allowed books to be objected to if they were “patently offensive” and violated community standards, he implied, was problematic.

“Community standards vary wildly across Texas,” Albright said, echoing a point often made by opponents of the law. “What would be deemed acceptable in Austin might likely be objected to somewhere else.”

In response, the state countered that there were “clear guidelines” as to what was considered sexual content. But Albright pointed out that the law’s broadly articulated standard is essentially cut-and-pasted from the state’s obscenity law, noting, for example, that anything depicting a female breast below the top of the areolae was considered sexual: “You just excluded Caravaggio and Michelangelo,” the judge told attorneys.

Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly

PG cautions that a judge’s comments and questions during a hearing do not always reflect how she/he will rule. However, the OP does lead one to conclude the court is skeptical of the state’s defense of the law.

As New Law Looms, Follett Asks Publishers to Help ‘Rate’ Their Own Books for Sale in Texas

From Publishers Weekly:

In their recently filed lawsuit to block HB 900, the controversial new Texas law that will require vendors to rate books sold to schools for sexual content, a coalition of booksellers and publishing industry associations insist that the law is both unconstitutional and impractical. “Booksellers do not see a clear path forward to rating the content of the thousands of titles sold to schools in the past, nor the thousands of titles that are published each year,” explained plaintiff Charley Rejsek, CEO of Austin-based vendor BookPeople, in a July 25 statement announcing the litigation. But with the law’s September 1 effective date bearing down, Follett School Solutions, the nation’s largest distributor of books to schools, does see a path forward in Texas—and that path apparently includes asking publishers to help rate their own books.

“Without having a 3rd party yet for the required ratings (Sexually Relevant and Sexually Explicit), our goal is to get as robust of a collection of purchasable content ready on September 1st and continue building as titles are rated,” reads the text of a memo from Follett officials addressed to Publishing Partners, which was shared anonymously with PW. “However, this is quite a workload. Follett is asking you to provide us with a simple spreadsheet helping us to identify titles which fall into two categories: either NO Questionable Content or Possible SR or SE Content (which we would send to a 3rd party for rating). Again, our goal is to get as many of your titles [available] on September 1st as possible.”

In the memo, Follett officials acknowledge that Texas has yet to provide detailed “guidelines” for how to rate books for sexual content. “But every title we can deem ‘OK’ to provide to them on September 1 for sale will be of benefit,” the memo states.

However, with a hearing on their federal lawsuit seeking to block the new Texas law just days away, publishers and other industry stakeholders are balking at Follett’s request to help the vendor rate their titles. Though all of the Big Five publishers declined to comment directly on the Follett memo for this story, multiple publishers confirmed its details. One publishing executive told PW on background that they understand the bind Follett faces in Texas with the new law but that complying with the request to rate their books would make them “complicit” in an act of censorship. And in a statement, one publisher, Hachette, went on record to broadly reject the idea of rating its books.

“We strongly disagree with the idea that rating our books to flag certain content, or having retailers or wholesalers do this, is appropriate or helpful. We trust our teachers, trust our librarians, trust our parents, trust our student readers who are hungry to experience the world in all the ways that books allow. And we trust the processes of professional review and community input that have been in place for decades,” Hachette officials told PW. “As publishers, we want our books to reach the broadest possible readership. That readership comprises individuals with unique tastes, reading levels, and lived experiences. There is great variability in reading ability and content interest among young readers, even among those in the same grade or the same age.”

“It is our hope that laws that seek to limit access to books and that criminalize teachers, librarians and booksellers will be struck down as unconstitutional,” the Hachette statement concludes, “and that the choice of what book to read remains unregulated by the states.”

The Authors Guild, the nation’s largest author advocacy group—and also a plaintiff in the lawsuit seeking to strike down HB 900—called Follett’s request “alarming,” and is asking publishers not to cooperate.

“We urge publishers not to comply with Follett’s request as it will force them to self-censor and to censor their authors, and it will remove many educationally valuable books from the school market in the state of Texas, depriving students of access to them,” Authors Guild officials said in a statement. “It will also compel speech by forcing publishers to create lists of books that any community in Texas might possibly find ‘sexually relevant’ or offensive, making it appear as though the publishers are tacitly admitting that books listed as ‘Possible SR or SE Content are questionable.’ It could be difficult to sell those books to any school system after such lists are made public, despite the fact that in most cases only a very few parents might find them objectionable.”

. . . .

Follett officials did not comment on the memo for this story. “Follett is aware of the Texas legislation and will comply,” Donald Reinbold, director of strategic business development and content acquisitions for Follett School Solutions, told PW in a brief email. “We remain committed to serving our customers everywhere and will continue to support them as they navigate the required changes.”

In the memo, Follett officials offered some idea of what navigating the new law might look like: The company told publishers that it is preparing a Texas-only view (determined by IP address and account address) for its Titlewave online ordering service, and that the company “will not be putting through” any titles that contain possible sexual content pending the development of “a third party rating program.” Under the law, books rated “sexually explicit” would be banned from Texas schools entirely—and as such, the Follett memo notes, “will not be made available for sale” via Titlewave in Texas.

“Your support in identifying those titles that you know DO NOT fall into those categories will allow us to push through more of your titles from the first day of compliance,” the memo explains. “We have it on good authority that [Texas] sales will come quickly in the fall to get ahead of any additional changes or requirements, so I would ask that you take advantage of this opportunity to identify as many titles as possible and return them to Follett as soon as you can.”

Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly

PRH Rolls Out Banned Books Resources: ‘Let Kids Read’

From Publishing Perspectives:

On Monday (August 14), Andrew Paul at Popular Science wrote, “Iowa educators are turning to ChatGPT to help decide which titles should be removed from their school library shelves in order to legally comply with recent Republican-backed state legislation.”

Today (August 15), Penguin Random House has released its new “banned books resource site”—titled Let Kids Read.

The two events’ timing is coincidental. What’s intentional is a rising willingness among major book-business players to speak forthrightly to such politically inflamed issues.

PRH’s worldwide CEO, Nihar Malaviya, says on today’s release of its new campaign, “We believe in the power of books and their ability to make us better—as individuals and as a society.

“Books give us perspective; their stories allow us to feel seen and provide us with the opportunity to learn from each other’s lived experiences.

“The acceleration of book bannings, challenges, and related legislation sweeping across the country is a direct threat to democracy and our constitutional rights. Diverse stories deserve to be told, and readers deserve the autonomy to choose what books they read.”

To that end, the special site set is up as a consumer-facing presentation, ending in a selection of banned books grouped by category and intended to be rotated at regular intervals.

There’s a series of “What We’re Doing” sections first, and Publishing Perspectives readers will be familiar with many of the listed legal challenges in which PRH has been a party, often under the aegis of the Association of American Publishers. This is followed by a listing of relevant organizations the company works with; a section on the company’s support for its authors; and another section on teacher and librarian support.

Technically, that portion of the “banned book resource site” is a corporate-responsibility piece, albeit clearly one that displays some of the good works and associations made and maintained by the company in the service of resisting a censorious era’s darkest dynamics.

Where the piece shows its depth is in the next section, which offers Malaviya’s introductory commentary on the problem. Look for the section called “Resources for Everyone.”

Here you’ll find him linking to reputable (American Library Association) survey results indicating that 70 percent of American parents asked say that they’re opposed to book banning.

Even more enlightening is his use of Hannah Natanson’s May 23 report for the Washington Post in which investigative journalism found that LGBTQ content is the most frequent trigger in book-banning incidents and that the core challenges to the freedom to read in school-setting book challenges were filed, in the Post‘s analysis, by just 11 people in the 2021-2022 school year cycle. Each of these people created 10 or more challenges in their school districts—one lodging 92 challenges in a year.

Natanson’s article calls these the “serial filers” who launch those blizzards of complaints that send school boards reeling and books vanishing from shelves, with librarians and teachers caught in the crossfire.

In Malaviya’s article, he pledges, “We will always stand by those fighting for intellectual freedom.”

“Resources for Authors and Creators” will give you the Penguin Random House author Jacob Tobia, who makes an appeal to authors to avoid self-censorship, writing, “As authors, we must resist not only their efforts to ban our books, but also their efforts to make us afraid.

“Now is not the time to cower. Now is not the time to stop writing. It is the time to double down on our creative joy, on the power that comes with expressing the ideas and stories shimmering in our hearts.”

Link to the rest at Publishing Perspectives

PG says that Manhattan sensibilities differ substantially from those held by about 90% of the remainder of the US population. The idea of a group of business executives deciding what children can read is going to strike more than a few parents outside of the canyons of New York as both presumptious in the extreme.

Just because some corporate drone is familiar with what books sell doesn’t make them an expert on what children should be reading. It does, however, represent virtue signaling to other members of the NYC hive mind.

The rise of BookTok titles has meant less visibility for other titles, whether they’re longstanding authors or debuts.

From The New Publishing Standard:

“The rise of BookTok titles has meant less visibility for other titles, whether they’re longstanding authors or debuts.”

That’s per a post in The Guardian this weekend that takes yet another look at the BookTok phenomenon, happy to report easy-come quotes, but as ever short on analysis for what it means for the industry.

. . . .

“Groups of teenage girls regularly gather (in Waterstones Piccadilly, London) to buy new books and meet new friends, both discovered on the social media app TikTok.”

. . . .

Caroline Hardman, literary agent at the Hardman & Swainson agency: “It’s driving the appetite for romance and ‘romantasy’ in a really big way, so it’s having a strong effect on what publishers look for too.”

“When traditional publishers try to muscle in on the BookTok market, it never seems to work out quite the same way as an organic, viral recommendation.”

“BookTok is overwhelmingly a factor in Gen Z reading habits. In a poll of more than 2,000 16- to 25-year-olds, almost 59% said that BookTok had helped them discover a passion for reading. BookTok and book influencers significantly influence what choices this audience make about what they read, with 55% of respondents saying they turn to the platform for book recommendations.”

Link to the rest at The New Publishing Standard

Stop the world, I want to get off!

Boo Hoo. Publishers can’t figure out BookTok, so authors who are under contract with clueless publishers have next to zero visibility for the most likely purchasers of the latest .

It’s social media. TikTok will be old news some day, but social media is an important fact of life for this quarter’s revenues if you’re trying to sell to demographic groups who spend a lot of their time and get a lot of information, including information about what books are cool from social media.

BookTok sells way more books than The New York Times does, so all the times various publishers have taken the NYT book review editor to an expensive lunch don’t mean anything anymore. Besides, 95% of teenage girls have never read the New York Times or any other newspaper. They also don’t read print magazines targeted toward teenage girls.

When your readers have moved online, you better get online savvy or hire online savvy in a big hurry. That Mount Holyoke freshman who is an unpaid summer intern probably knows more about social media than the rest of the marketing department combined.

Some of the influencers on TikTok make money by promoting various products. Have your intern find out who they are and what they would charge to hype your next romantasy release and hire a few.

See what happens to sales on Amazon (because the outdated and weird publishing supply chain to book stores will take far too long to report how many books are being sold in bookstores and not returned and BookToker viewers are unlikely to spend a lot of time in bookstores anyway).

If a BookToker sells some books, send more books and more money and repeat. See, social media can be your friend after all.

A fine balance

From The Bookseller:

Children’s books can carry important social messages – but how to stop them sounding preachy?

Books have played a huge part in my life. I’m a mum of four, a former primary school teacher, and a children’s author. My kids devoured stories, from The Faraway Tree to Roald Dahl. Books taught them that their imaginations had no limits. Books were read purely for fun, and that was that.

Even when I started to write children’s books, almost 15 years ago, I never intentionally set out to ensure that my stories had a message. Although many of my books were inspired by my experiences as a mum, these events were still very much linked to a child’s personal world, rather than the wider world around them.

Then one day, one of my young children asked me about a person that we passed who was experiencing homelessness, asleep in a shop doorway. I answered in as simple a way as I could, but they kept asking more questions, and I struggled to answer – to find the right words to explain. I didn’t want to scare my children – but at the same time, I wanted to be honest with them about the complex causes that lead to people experiencing homelessness. I also wanted to let them know that there are things we can do to help.

It was then that I decided that I wanted to write a picture book that introduced children to homelessness. I wanted it to be gentle but informative – to create awareness, but not to scare them, and to leave them feeling empowered that they can make a difference.

The resulting book, Kindness Rocks!, was the most difficult I have ever written, and it took me 25 drafts to strike the right balance between the social message and the sense of fun. So for any authors out there feeling the urge to create a kids’ book with an activist agenda, here are a few lessons I learnt.

First, I opted to use animal characters, which offer a great way of engaging children’s emotions while providing a certain distance from sensitive themes.

Second, I also decided to set the story in the world of professional music to prevent the tale from feeling too “worthy”. The idea hit me one day, in 2020, when I saw a photograph of Jon Bon Jovi washing dishes in his JBJ Soul Kitchen, which was short on volunteers due to restrictions caused by the pandemic. Jon’s philanthropy, kindness and compassion inspired my main character, Jonny, whose glamorous appeal will hopefully draw in young readers, but whose experiences of losing his identity – along with his voice – are anything but.

Next, I worked to offer multiple layers of complexity for young readers and their adults to engage in, depending on their age, maturity and preference. When creating the characters in the book that are experiencing homelessness, I wanted to reveal their background and what led to them being where they were now, as this provided a key opportunity for parents and carers (if they wished) to strike up a conversation. I did this by using examples that made sense on the animals’ level but could also offer real-world parallels – for example, Tommy tiger left home after injuring his paw and no longer being able to hunt (unemployment due to disability); Gina giraffe left home due to mean Mr Wolf (an abusive family member); and Busky bear lost his home in the flood (natural disaster). The opportunity to delve deeper and link to real life experiences is there if parents wish to – but it makes plenty of sense if they don’t, or if a child is reading alone.

With the talented Robert Garcia on board to illustrate, I was also able to ensure that the illustrations would be full of colour, dynamism and warmth, to avoid any sense that this was a lecture in disguise, and to ensure that the emotional keynote throughout was hope.

Finally of course, I read other children’s books that balance a compelling story with a powerful message and analysed what made them work. For example, The Last Chip by Duncan Beadie cleverly nods towards homelessness through visual clues while focusing on a story of simple kindness and compassion. The Invisible by Tom Percival tackles a family’s struggle to pay their rent and bills much more directly, but the author provides balance with its hopeful conclusion, showing that it only takes one person to make a difference.

Link to the rest at The Bookseller

How to Make a Cliché Work for You

From Almost an Author:

In middle grade novels, do you know what gets my goat? Stories riddled with clichés.

Let’s address the elephant in the room: cliches often come across as lazy writing. Cliches can make dialog as flat as a pancake and cause your labor of love to become as dull as dishwater. Worse, an ill-fitting cliché can throw the reader out of the story world you’ve created. Mark my words, your writing will improve if you weed out these overused sayings. But how?

Once upon a blue moon (and for a different website), I wrote a longer article detailing six ways to deal with this issue. But here, I’d like to focus on just one tried and true method that works especially well for middle grade stories. Consider it my “two-cents worth” approach because it adds humor to your story and gives you more bang for your buck.

Are you ready for this tip? It’s “Run with the cliché.”

I can explain it best like this: Take an old phrase and give it a middle grade twist by adding onto the end of it. The result may tickle your funny bone.

Look at my examples and then try this method for yourself.  

  • That problem was as old as time… but not nearly as old as the Twinkie Mom packed in my lunch today.
  • Sweet Sally. She’s always bending over backwards for people. Literally. She’s a gymnast.
  • I was left with one burning question. I guess that’s what happens when you set your homework on fire and your best friend douses the flames at the last second.
  • In my homeroom, finding a friendly face used to be a dime a dozen. Not with today’s inflation.
  • It’s hard for grandma to jog her memory. It’s more like a crawl.

Link to the rest at Almost an Author

Texas’s new ‘book sexual rating’ law denounced

From BookBrowse:

Last week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law HB900, which requires suppliers of books to school libraries, librarians, and teachers to rate the books, both on future sales and retroactively. As the Texas Tribune wrote, all vendors, including bookstores, would have to assign ratings to books “based on the presence of depictions or references to sex. A book would get a ‘sexually relevant’ rating if the material describes or portrays sexual activity and is part of the required school curriculum. A book would get a ‘sexually explicit’ rating if the material describing or portraying sexual behavior is ‘patently offensive’ and not part of required curriculum. State law defines ‘patently offensive’ as materials that are an affront to ‘current community standards of decency.’ “

Several organizations have responded. The ABA’s American Booksellers for Free Expression said in part, that it was disappointed that the Governor “ignored the outpouring of opposition from booksellers and Texans across the state and signed HB900 into law. HB900 is an onerous law that will chill speech, and it could threaten the livelihoods of independent bookstores. The governor described HB900 as ’empowering parents,’ an ironic statement at best. The government dictating what other parents’ children can and cannot read is hardly empowering to parents or students.

“From the day this bill was introduced, ABFE and independent bookstores in Texas have fought against HB900. Now that HB900 has been signed into law, ABFE will pursue every option available to ensure independent bookstores do not suffer its consequences.”

ABFE added that the law will make librarians and vendors “inevitably err on the side of caution by not selling or carrying a book title for fear it might run afoul of the law. Whether or not a book or materials are ‘sexually relevant’ or ‘sexually explicit’ is inherently prejudiced and could result in different ratings from different vendors.

Link to the rest at BookBrowse

An Experiment with ChatGPT

Write the first paragraph for a children’s book that includes a little girl, a unicorn and a lazy wolf.

Once upon a time in the enchanting land of Fairytale Meadows, lived a spirited little girl named Lily. Lily had golden curls that danced in the wind, and her eyes sparkled with curiosity. One day, while exploring the magical forest, she stumbled upon a magical unicorn named Sparkle, whose shimmering mane glowed with all the colors of the rainbow. Little did they know that their adventure was about to get even more exciting, for lurking behind a moss-covered tree was a lazy but lovable wolf named Wally, who preferred napping to chasing his prey.

What magic powers did sparkle, a magic unicorn possess?

Sparkle, the magical unicorn, possessed a wondrous array of enchanting powers that filled the hearts of all who encountered her with awe. First and foremost, her horn sparkled with an iridescent glow, allowing her to channel the purest magic in the realm. Sparkle possessed the ability to grant wishes, turning dreams into reality with a single touch of her shimmering horn. She could also create dazzling trails of rainbow-colored stardust, lighting up the night sky with a celestial spectacle. With her gentle presence, Sparkle could communicate with animals, bridging the gap between the magical and natural worlds. Her magic powers were boundless, bringing joy, love, and hope to all who crossed paths with the extraordinary unicorn.

Why was Wally the wolf so lazy?

Wally the wolf was known throughout Fairytale Meadows for his undeniable laziness. Unlike other wolves who roamed the forest with vigor and determination, Wally had a penchant for relaxation and a strong aversion to exerting himself unnecessarily. He preferred the comfort of his cozy den, where he would spend hours curled up in a fuzzy ball, snuggled amongst soft moss and leaves. Wally believed that life was too short to waste on constant running and hunting, and he saw no need to chase after his meals when there were abundant berries and fruits available nearby. His laziness, though unconventional, brought a sense of tranquility and balance to the bustling woodland, and his gentle nature made him a beloved character among the creatures of Fairytale Meadows.

What did Sparkle do to get Wally to do some useful work for Lily?

As Sparkle and Lily ventured deeper into Fairytale Meadows, they encountered a challenge that required Wally’s assistance. Knowing Wally’s affinity for relaxation, Sparkle cleverly devised a plan to motivate the lazy wolf. With a mischievous twinkle in her eye, Sparkle whispered a magical spell that awakened Wally’s sense of adventure and duty. The spell cast a spell of enchantment upon Wally, filling him with newfound energy and a sense of purpose. Suddenly, Wally’s laziness transformed into determination, and he eagerly offered his assistance to Lily and Sparkle. Recognizing the importance of their quest, Wally became a loyal companion, ready to help Lily in any way he could. With Sparkle’s magical touch and a sprinkle of motivation, Wally discovered the joy of lending a helping paw, embarking on a journey that would unveil his hidden potential and forge a lasting bond with his newfound friends.

Did Sparkle have to remind Wally not to be lazy?

While Sparkle appreciated Wally’s newfound motivation and willingness to help, she occasionally had to remind him to resist his natural inclination for laziness. Sparkle understood that change takes time, and habits can be hard to break. So, whenever Wally’s laziness threatened to resurface, Sparkle would gently nudge him with her velvety muzzle, reminding him of the importance of their mission and the joy they could bring to others by working together. With each gentle reminder, Wally would shake off his sluggishness and recommit himself to being an active participant in their adventures. Sparkle’s encouragement and patient guidance helped Wally overcome his lazy tendencies, inspiring him to become a more dependable and enthusiastic companion for Lily and Sparkle.

What dangers threatened Lily as she walked around Fairyland Meadows?

As Lily traversed the enchanting Fairyland Meadows, she encountered a few perils that tested her bravery and quick thinking. Deep within the forest, Lily came across treacherous thorny thickets that seemed to close in on her from all sides, challenging her to find a way through without getting entangled. She also encountered mischievous sprites that played tricks and created illusions, making it difficult for Lily to find her way home. At times, Lily faced sudden storms with gusty winds that threatened to whisk her away, and she had to seek shelter and find her footing amidst the chaos. Additionally, there were misbehaving magical creatures that, although harmless at heart, could unintentionally cause a bit of chaos and mischief. But with the help of Sparkle’s magic and Wally’s newfound diligence, Lily was able to navigate these dangers and emerge triumphant, growing stronger and more resilient with each challenge she faced.

What is the end of the story about Lily, Sparkle and Wally in Fairyland Meadows?

In the end, after overcoming numerous obstacles and forging a remarkable bond, Lily, Sparkle, and Wally emerged as heroes of Fairyland Meadows. Through their collective courage, kindness, and determination, they brought harmony and joy to the enchanted realm. Lily’s unwavering spirit and innate curiosity inspired others to embrace adventure and explore the wonders of the world. Sparkle’s magical powers continued to grant wishes, spreading hope and fulfilling dreams throughout the land. Wally, having discovered his true potential, became a trusted guardian and loyal friend, always ready to lend a helping paw. Together, they brought laughter, love, and enchantment to every corner of Fairyland Meadows, leaving a lasting legacy of friendship and magic. And as the sun set on their final adventure, Lily, Sparkle, and Wally knew that their incredible journey was just the beginning of a lifetime filled with extraordinary tales and everlasting friendships in the magical realm they called home.

Then PG asked ChatGPT to regenerate a response to the final prompt it used to create the paragraph above: What is the end of the story about Lily, Sparkle and Wally in Fairyland Meadows?

In the grand finale of Lily’s adventure in Fairyland Meadows, she, Sparkle, and Wally united their strengths and talents to overcome the final and most formidable obstacle. A wicked sorceress, jealous of the trio’s bond and the joy they spread, cast a powerful spell of darkness, threatening to shroud the entire land in eternal gloom. Undeterred by the daunting task, Lily’s unwavering determination inspired Sparkle and Wally to tap into their true potential. Sparkle summoned her most potent magic, creating a radiant barrier of light that pushed back the darkness, while Wally’s swift agility and keen senses helped guide them through the treacherous path. Together, they confronted the sorceress, their unity and friendship shining as a beacon of hope. With Lily’s pure heart and unwavering belief in the power of goodness, the sorceress’s spell was shattered, and Fairyland Meadows was bathed in a glorious resurgence of light and joy. As a testament to their extraordinary bond, Lily, Sparkle, and Wally were hailed as heroes, forever celebrated for their bravery and their ability to bring light and love to all corners of Fairyland Meadows. From that day forward, their friendship flourished, and they continued to embark on magical adventures, spreading happiness and enchantment wherever they roamed.

PG concludes that, even with the help of artificial intelligence, he’s not likely to be the next Dr. Seuss, Beatrix Potter, E.B. White or J.K. Rowling

The Young Heroes of the Writing World

From Publisher’s Weekly:

Publishers, writers, and readers know today’s contradictions. As an organized right-wing campaign surges across states and school districts promoting book bans, a new era of original writing—and reading groups—by young people rises. Especially stimulating among the conflicting movements is the increase of original publishing of the young for the young. This is unprecedented. As a historian of literacy and of children and youth, I follow trends in writing and reading. As a public scholar and activist, I write about the unprecedented “new illiteracy” of our unconstitutional, anti–children’s rights and development banners, and I collaborate with the ACLU, ALA, PEN America, and other organizations.

My wife and I follow illustrated children’s books and share them. I call their authors “My Young Heroes.” I publicize how these exceptional young people’s experiences, actions, and interactions shed light on critical dimensions in the uses of reading, writing, and publishing across ages, media, and critical spheres of activity.

In 2021, Dillon Helbing, then an eight-year-old second grader in Idaho, wrote by hand an 81-page novel. He hid The Adventures of Dillon Helbing’s Crismis in the local library on a shelf with other fiction. According to the New York Times, “Over the next month, a series of circumstances made the book one of the library’s most sought-after titles and also inspired children in Boise to write their own stories.” Dillon’s new book project is The Jacket-Eating Closet. Dillon vows to write until he is 40.

Tanitoluwa “Tani” Adewumi, a Nigerian child immigrant to New York City, became the youngest chess master in history when he was 10. In 2020, he released an illustrated book for children, Tani’s New Home: A Refugee Finds Hope & Kindness in America, as well as young reader and adult editions of My Name Is Tani… and I Believe in Miracles (all published by Tommy Nelson). He has also written guides to chess for different age groups. At the end of 2022, Tani and his family received U.S. asylum. He continues to write and play chess.

In 2020, when Orion Jean of Fort Worth, Tex., was 10, he began collecting and distributing books to needy children as part of his Race to Kindness initiative. By the end of 2022, Jean met his goal of donating 500,000 books, and he has also written a book, A Kids Book About Leadership.

In 2021, at age 14, Zaila Avant-Garde became the first African American to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee. The extraordinary young woman’s greater passions lie in dribbling multiple basketballs simultaneously—for which she holds three Guinness World Records—and mental math. She plans to attend Harvard and play basketball. In May, Random House Books for Young Readers published her first book, It’s Not Bragging If It’s True: How to Be Awesome at Life. This month, Doubleday Books for Young Readers will release her picture book Words of Wonder from Z to A.

Link to the rest at Publisher’s Weekly

Librarians, Publishers, Bookstores Join Lawsuit Over Arkansas Library ‘Obscenity’ Law

From Publisher’s Weekly:

Some 17 plaintiffs—including the ALA’s Freedom to Read Foundation, the Association of American Publishers, the American Booksellers Association, and the Authors Guild—will file a federal lawsuit over a recently passed law in Arkansas, Act 372 of 2023 (also known as SB 81), which exposes librarians to criminal liability for making allegedly “obscene” books available to minors.

According to a report in the Arkansas Advocate, news of the suit comes after the Central Arkansas Library System board of directors voted on May 25 to proceed with the litigation. At press time, the suit had yet to be filed.

In a statement to PW, ALA officials confirmed their participation in the suit. “The American Library Association is pleased that the Freedom to Read Foundation, our First Amendment legal defense arm, and our state affiliate, the Arkansas Library Association, are participating in the lawsuit to vindicate Arkansas residents’ freedom to read,” ALA president Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada told PW. “The government has no place in deciding what books people can borrow or buy.”

The law in question, which was signed by governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders on March 31 and is set to take effect on August 1, removes an exemption from prosecution for school and public libraries and would empower virtually anyone to challenge the appropriateness of library materials in Arkansas. Library staff found to have “knowingly” distributed or facilitating the distribution of allegedly obscene material to a minor—defined as anyone under 18—would be open to a potential felony charge.

The impending lawsuit in Arkansas is the latest in an escalating legal offensive being waged by freedom to read advocates in response to the ongoing surge in book bans and legislative restrictions nationwide.

Link to the rest at Publisher’s Weekly

Woke Roald Dahl Will Put Kids to Sleep

From The Wall Street Journal:

My late father-in-law detested vague or imprecise language. “Don’t tell me you saw a person,” went his typical complaint. “What kind of person was it? A man or a woman? Tall or short? Old or young?”

He, like his contemporary Roald Dahl, came from an era when people valued clarity in speech and writing and believed words should reveal meaning rather than conceal it. Puffin Books has made the passing of that era obvious by subjecting Dahl’s books to a ghastly process of social-justice blandification.

The Telegraph reports that Puffin functionaries and hired “sensitivity readers” have combed through Dahl’s works for children—including whizbang novels such as “Matilda,” “The Twits,” and “James and the Giant Peach”—and cut all references to fatness, craziness, ugliness, whiteness (even of bedsheets), blackness (even of tractors) and the great Rudyard Kipling, along with any allusion to acts lacking full and enthusiastic consent. Some male characters have been made female; female villains have been made less nasty; women in general have been socially elevated; while mothers and fathers, boys and girls have dwindled into sexless “parents” and “children.”

Dahl, who died in 1990, didn’t agree to these changes—consent came from Netflix, which bought Dahl’s estate in 2018. Many of the edits reveal a total failure to understand why children love the spiky and opinionated British writer and why they gobble his stories as fast as his porcine characters eat sweets. Dahl’s writing flashes with menace and tenderness; it’s funny, exciting and unpredictable.

Like all the most enduring stories for children, Dahl’s are odd and original. They stir the mind, disquiet the spirit, and stimulate the imagination. To read “Peter Pan” or “Alice in Wonderland” is to plunge into a fever dream; to read Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is to careen through a fantastical landscape full of greedy youngsters (and indulgent adults) who meet bizarre and terrible fates. Stripping away the weirdness expunges the magic.

Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal

ALA: Book Bannings in the USA Broke All Records in 2022

From Publishing Perspectives:

Last year saw 1,269 attempts to ban or restrict library materials in the United States, the highest level since the compiling of data began some 20 years ago, according to a new report from the American Library Association‘s watchdog agency on the issue.

The numbers make compelling reading, particularly in a week when effects similar to the wave of book bannings in the United States is echoed by a Wisconsin elementary school’s removal of a song from its spring concert because the Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus duet “Rainbowland” could be, in the words of the school administration, “perceived as controversial.” Here is Harm Venhuizen’s write-up for the Associated Press.

The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom tracks censorship demands made on libraries in the United States. The sheer magnitude of book challenges this office recorded in 2022 the growing threat of censorship in libraries.

. . . .

  • A record 2,571 unique titles were targeted for censorship, according to the report, constituting a major, 38-percent jump in such activity over that seen in 2021.
  • The 2022 number of reported book challenges relayed by the library association nearly doubles the 729 challenges reported in 2021.
  • Some 58 percent of those reported book challenges were made to books and materials in school libraries, classroom libraries, or school curricula, according to the report.

. . . .

Organized censorship groups, the report indicates, are creating lists of books they want to see banned from libraries. The use of these lists, the Office for Intellectual Freedom points out, “contributed significantly to the skyrocketing number of challenges and the frequency with which each title was challenged.”

Prior to 2021, the agency says, “the vast majority of challenges to library resources only sought to remove or restrict access to a single book.” Now, 90 percent of challenges include multiple titles, contributing to the increased numbers the agency is reporting:

  • 12 percent were in cases involving two to nine books
  • 38 percent were in cases involving 10 to 99 books
  • 40 percent were in cases involving 100 or more books

Link to the rest at Publishing Perspectives

These sorts of articles raise a question in PG’s mind: Do children’s book publishers really understand their market – parents of children?

The Origins of Female Protagonists in Children’s Literature

From Book Browse:

This article relates to The Magician’s Daughter

Bridget (known as Biddy), the protagonist of H. G. Parry’s The Magician’s Daughter, grows up on the magical, hidden island of Hy-Brasil, with only her father, the mage Rowan O’Connell, and his familiar, a rabbit named Hutchincroft. She is greatly influenced by the stories of heroines she reads about in her father’s library; female literary figures with whom she identifies and who help shape her character and moral compass. Their influence proves crucial when, in 1912 at the age of 16, Biddy has to leave the island to right past wrongs and face the challenges of the human world. Biddy’s coming of age from an idyllic, magical childhood to a cruel, harsh awakening follows in the footsteps of her heroines, such as Alice from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Wendy Darling from Peter Pan, and Sara Crewe from A Little Princess.

The library of Biddy’s youth is filled with volumes that today’s readers might consider classics of children’s literature, but would have been fairly new at the time. Fiction written specifically for children and adolescents has its origins in the 18th century. Prior to this, the oral tradition of nursery rhymes and published religious verses such as Isaac Watts’ Divine Songs for the Use of Children (1715) was used to inculcate morals and values. Fairy tales, such as those by Madame D’Aulnoy and Charles Perrault, with their predominantly female protagonists, were not originally intended for children. Nor was the first fairy tale published in English in 1621, which featured a male hero, Tom Thumb, already a well-known figure from folklore. In his 1730 stage play The Tragedy of Tragedies, or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great, Henry Fielding used the same male character to comment satirically on gender roles of the time — and, indeed, Tom Thumb himself would usually be played by a female child actress.

In 1749, Sarah Fielding, Henry’s sister, included two fairy tales in her novel The Governess, or Little Female Academy. This book is considered to be the first English-language novel written for children and it is notable that all its characters are female. The eldest pupil, Miss Jenny, leads by example, recounting the story of her life to teach the others how to aspire to goodness and happiness; all the other girls then tell the stories of their lives as well. A few years later, in 1765, John Newbery, the first major publisher of children’s books, published The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, an anonymously written story of the poor but intelligent and virtuous Margery Meadwell, who is ultimately rewarded for her innate nobility and diligence.

By the 19th century, children’s literature had begun to evolve away from religious-themed morality tales as society became more secularized. Elements of magic and fantasy permeated children’s stories with the advent of Edgar Taylor’s 1823 translation of the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales and the 1846 publication of Hans Christian Andersen’s stories. Although male protagonists continued to appear in popular works of the time such as Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies (1863), the most influential, enduring, and famous of 19th century children’s books feature a female main character: Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass (1872). The heroine, Alice, is an exceptionally bright seven-year-old girl who enters dream worlds highly influenced by Edward Lear’s nonsense verses, juxtaposed with the darkness and chaos of traditional nursery rhymes. Carroll’s mentor, the Scottish author George MacDonald, deserves to be as well-known today as his protégé, being the creator of such memorable female protagonists as Tangle of The Golden Key (1867), Princess Irene of The Princess and the Goblins(1872), and Rosamunde and Agnes of The Lost Princess: A Double Story (1875).

Link to the rest at Book Browse

Let Kids Read Roald Dahl’s Books the Way He Wrote Them

From The Nation:

The United States can be a harsh place to be a child. There are guns galore and bullies in school. Suicide is on the rise, homelessness is rampant, and many school budgets have been scraped down to the bone. In New York City, almost one in five children are poor. One in seven doesn’t have enough to eat. Even well-off youngsters struggle with sexual abuse, depression, stress, and the cruelty of online life. Thank God there is one place where all is sweetness and light, or will be soon—children’s books.

You may have read that Roald Dahl’s classic tales have been altered to be, well, nicer. Because as we all know, niceness is what Roald Dahl is all about. Forget the misanthropy, physical disgust, and delight in transgression and violence and extravagance that give his stories bite and edge. Forget, too, the dependence of wit and vividness on specific, concrete words, on their sounds and evocative associations. What matters is that no one in the whole world be offended and that no opportunity be missed for moral improvement.

The Roald Dahl Story Company and Puffin, Dahl’s authorized publisher, have teamed up with a group called Inclusive Minds, “a collective for people who are passionate about inclusion and accessibility in children’s literature.” The organization turned the task of sanitizing Dahl over to their sensitivity readers, the oddly named Inclusivity Ambassadors, who have “lived experience” and can provide “valuable input.” If they sound like smooth-talking authoritarians, that’s not far off. In the world of children’s lit these days, sensitivity is king. But are actual readers—parents and children—calling out for the removal of the word “black” describing tractors or for replacing “North Africa” with “lots of different countries”? Do they object to describing a voice as “screechy” instead of “annoying”? I don’t know why Dahl is being censored—hopes of higher profits by Netflix, which owns the rights to his books and the movies made from them? Fear of social-justice Twitter? Did it start out as a few modest tweaks but got out of hand? In any case, there’s a loss in these changes—in vivacity, vigor, concreteness. As any good writer can tell you, we all know what a screechy voice sounds like, but an annoying one could be anything.

The Ambassadors have made hundreds of changes—59 in The Witches alone. At first, I thought a few were justifiable. Dahl was oddly obsessed with fatness and unattractiveness and used these qualities to mock unlikable characters. In the new editions, every single use of “fat” and “ugly” has been removed. I see the point: We know a lot more now than a few generations ago about how children suffer when others make fun of their appearance, and how long-lasting the harm is. But I don’t know that replacing “fat” with “enormous” sends a different message, or that replacing “fat little brown mouse” with “little brown mouse” does much for the cause of kindness—doesn’t fat also suggest cute and cuddly, at least in small furry animals? The trouble is, once you start fiddling, where do you stop? Why not leave the books alone, and if people are so offended, they can stop reading them (which I doubt will happen any time soon)? The alternative is the falsification of history and the dumbing-down of great literature.

Be that as it may, most of the changes have no such therapeutic rationale. They seem more like the work of an over-caffeinated undergraduate relying on those lists activists write up of Words to Avoid. “Crazy” becomes “silly,” while “idiot,” “nutty,” “screwy,” and other mental-health-related colloquialisms are deleted. “Mother “and “father” become “parents,” “brother and sister” are “siblings,” “boys and girls” are “children,” “ladies and gentlemen” are “folks.” (Sadly missing is my favorite degenderizing neologism, “nibling,” for niece or nephew, which sounds like something you’d find in a can of corn, or maybe an opera by Wagner). But the Ambassadors don’t stop with simple word changes. Compare these passages from The Witches:

2001: “Don’t be foolish,” my grandmother said. “You can’t go around pulling the hair of every lady you meet, even if she is wearing gloves. Just you try it and see what happens.”

2022: “Don’t be foolish,” my grandmother said. “Besides, there are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.”

It helps to consider the actual story. The Witches wear wigs because they are bald, and they wear gloves to hide their claws. Touching their wigs would be a dangerous thing to do. Besides, the story takes place at a witches’ convention, where it is unlikely the child narrator is going to meet an ultra-orthodox woman in a sheitel or a chemo patient or a woman who simply enjoys playing with her appearance. But never mind the context: The important thing is to remember that wigs are okay! Be nice! Even if it means adding a preachy smiley face to a book written by an angry genius.

And what about this change in Matilda? Dahl is describing the joy of reading:

2001: She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling.

2022: She went to nineteenth-century estates with Jane Austen. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and California with John Steinbeck.

Take away those olden-day sailing ships and all the adventure is gone. I love Jane Austen, but the constrained world of Regency country gentry simply doesn’t convey the excitement and danger and unfamiliarity Dahl was going for. As for John Steinbeck’s California, it was a grim and prosaic place. What child has ever said, Oh, to be on the road with the Joads! And why is that old imperialist Kipling gone but not Hemingway, whose African stories heavily feature white men hunting now-endangered species and drinking too much? Isn’t Hemingway kind of a colonizer too? Perhaps the next edition will replace him with Mary Oliver.

Link to the rest at The Nation