Regular readers will not be surprised to know that my childhood identity was that of Book Girl: The kid whose nose was forever in a book. Who read all the "Little House" books, including the one Almanzo Wilder. Who knew the difference between the Newberry Medal and Newberry Honor. Who read every book in the classroom library, and remembered the call numbers of favorite volumes in the school library. Who, when hospitalized for asthma (a common condition among Book Kids), asked only for concerned relatives to retrieve a stack of books from home. . . . To the tribe of kids who keep paperbacks in their lunchboxes, the Scholastic Book Fair was akin to a religious holiday.
A lot of people feel nostalgia for book fairs, as I learned when a crowd showed up at the "Grown-Ass Book Fair" hosted at my partner's Philadelphia record store in May. It's why I'm not surprised there's a growing rumble of outrage at news reports that Scholastic has been giving into the far-right's anti-reading pressure campaign.
Last week, Judd Legum at Popular Information reported that "Scholastic is facilitating the exclusion of books that feature people of color and/or LGBTQ characters." They've shunted books featuring characters who aren't straight or white into a separate category to give schools "the option to exclude the entire set of books from the book fair." In a dark twist, the category is called "Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice," though its purpose is to allow schools to banish books that suggest that characters that aren't straight white men have stories worth reading.
Despite all the right-wing hysteria about "pornography" used to justify book banning, what clearly links these books has nothing to do with sex. No, what's offensive to the right is the possibility that a white kid might learn that some other people exist who are not white.
Scholastic's argument is that red states are passing book bans that are both draconian and incredibly vague. "Critical race theory" is banned in some places, for instance, but what Republicans mean by that phrase is not defined.
Of course, the widespread understanding is these laws are meant only to suppress books with non-white or non-straight characters. To the censors, a gay couple kissing is a "sex act," but a straight couple is merely "normal." The bans also operate under the unspoken assumption that "white" is not a race, but a character merely being Black is "critical race theory."
Scholastic, as Legum reports, is reacting to a sustained pressure campaign from the right, which routinely accuses the company of flooding "our schools and libraries with books that promote dangerous and anti-Biblical ideas." In doing so, Republicans give lie to their ludicrous claims that book banning is about "parents rights." This isn't a classroom or library, where, in theory, a kid could access a book forbidden by her parents.
This point came up repeatedly in my conversations with parents and educators who are resisting the book banning frenzy unleashed by Moms for Liberty and other right wing groups: These people are trying to strip away parents rights, not protect them. The goal is forcing every other parent to adhere to their fundamentalist fantasy of a world where everyone is white, straight, and conformist.
"I do believe parents can decide for their own child, not the entire school district,” explained a teacher and a parent, who wished her name withheld for work reasons.
Elizabeth Mikitarian, a retired kindergarten teacher who founded Stop Moms for Liberty, argued that "the entire community" should not lose access to a book because a single parent or a single group doesn't "approve of something."
"Children come to school and whatever they are, whatever they have going on in their lives that that comes into the school room door with them," Mikitarian said. Because of that, the anonymous teacher argued, it's important "all readers can find something that they can relate to." She also argued that reading books about people not like yourself helps kids develop empathy and understanding.
Kids learning that it's okay to be different? Girls developing intelligence and ambition? Students feeling empathy for people not like themselves? Those are all things that Republicans, as they become increasingly fascistic, oppose. Everyone agrees that books do these things for kids. It's just that the right doesn't want kids to develop open minds and kinder hearts.
[T]he ultimate victims are kids. The world looks a lot different than it did in the 80s, but I suspect Book Kids are still with us. They still need the rush from opening a brand new book and smelling the ink on the page. They still need to get lost in the stories of other people, both real and fictional, that allow them to imagine a world outside the dull parameters of childhood. Quashing those kids and their imaginations is just another reminder that it's not "family values" or "morality" that motivates our modern GOP. It's the base sadism of people like Donald Trump, who treats books like hostile rodents that will bite him if he holds them too closely.
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