[Updated: 10/24, 10:40 a.m. ET: Change.org has posted an action alert about this, complete with an easy automated message you can send to Scholastic.] Most of us with young children in public school know about Scholastic Book Fairs. Many of us remember them from our own childhoods. Now comes news that Scholastic has banned a
Heather Has Two Mommies, the classic picture book about a girl with lesbian moms, is now out in a new 20th anniversary edition. Author Lesléa Newman has a piece in this week’s Publisher’s Weekly, in which she discusses the origins of the book and reactions both positive and negative. I have to admit, though, that
“We tried to incubate a rock and that didn’t work,” jokes Justin Richardson, one of the authors of And Tango Makes Three. The truth is, however, that he and his co-author and partner, Peter Parnell, became dads themselves back in February, as the New York Times reports today. Gemma Parnell-Richardson doesn’t have feathers like Tango,
More words of wisdom on banned books, this time from acclaimed young adult author Julie Anne Peters: You can’t ban a book that never makes it into a library. When I hear about authors who are up in arms about their book being banned, or removed from reading lists, I confess to a sliver of
My favorite Banned Book Week quote so far: When we ban a book about a kid on the outside, we’re taking a step toward banning the kid. —Chris Crutcher, whose books have several times landed him on the American Library Association’s list of Top Ten Most Challenged Books (sometimes for homosexual content). He was speaking
I first had the pleasure of interviewing Sarah Brannen when her children’s book Uncle Bobby’s Wedding launched early last year. I wrote about the right wing’s first attack on the book, which involved shameless plagiarism of my earlier piece by ultra-conservative writer Brent Bozell III at Town Hall. I then followed the story as the
Continuing my posts in honor of Banned Books Week. This is a slightly updated version of a piece I wrote for Bay Windows during last year’s Banned Books Week. If you haven’t yet read it, try to guess which children’s book featuring rabbits was challenged in 1959 for promoting (gasp!) interracial marriage. And come back
Continuing my series of posts in honor of this year’s Banned Books Week, here’s a public service announcement about it from the American Library Association. It’s aimed at helping kids understand the meaning of the week, and why banning books is un-American.
It’s the start of Banned Books Week here in the U.S., “an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. . . . Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted
(Originally published in Bay Windows, September 3, 2009.) “As a kid, Cinderella was basically my favorite fairy tale. I always loved it, even though it was cheesy,” says author Malinda Lo. “I decided to do a retelling of Cinderella since I never read one that I liked.” Lo’s debut young adult novel, Ash (Little, Brown,
