One of my favorite things to do in Shelf Life—or with Shelf Life, I should say—is bring publishing-industry drama to the non–publishing industry folks who read, because I realize not everyone is on #BookTwt or reads PWDaily, so, I do those things, and then I pass on the highlights. Today’s is more of a lowlight, which the title implies I’m sure. This story has made it to several mainstream (non-industry) news outlets like NPR and HuffPo, so you may have already heard. But I’ll recap it anyway. With commentary because obviously.
Who remembers the Scholastic Book Fair? Anybody my age and younger, probably. Scholastic launched its in-school book fair business in 1981—coincidentally, the same year I was launched. I’ll take it back a bit further and cover Scholastic before I get into the book fair business.
Scholastic is a book publisher and it’s a really, really big one. They’re the largest publisher of children’s books in the world (Harry Potter? Hunger Games?) and they also publish reference books, magazines, K-12 textbooks, and licensed books based on properties like Star Wars, Pokemon, and Marvel. If that were not enough to be getting on with, they also have two non-publishing arms of their business—verticals that support the publishing business—which are their book clubs and their book fairs. The book fairs being the thing that’s making the news lately.
If you’ve never been to a Scholastic Book Fair, the reasons could be:
You were out of elementary school before 1981.
You attended school outside the US.
Your school sucked.
Schools don’t host the Scholastic Book Fair by default; the school has to contact Scholastic and request to host a fair. The school then sets aside space and personnel (parents, teachers, and school staff such as librarians). Scholastic supplies the display cases, books, and planning tools. When the Scholastic Book Fair comes to a school, it’s usually set up for a week and students at the school can come in and shop the fair throughout the week.
When I was in school—and dinosaurs roamed the earth—the school would send a little pamphlet home ahead with the books that would be available and their prices, so students could plan their purchases ahead and parents could send the kids to school with money for their purchases. It’s all done digitally now, obviously, though I don’t know all the specifics because, you know, not in school and no kids to send to school as little spies to report back to me.
The Scholastic Book Fair is legitimately great for everybody involved. Scholastic moves books and makes money. Scholastic’s authors’ and illustrators’ books are promoted at the fair. The hosting school gets a cut so it’s a fundraiser for them. And, perhaps most important from my perspective, is this: When working as intended, young kids are encouraged to go into a bookstore environment that is stocked just for them with wall-to-wall appropriate and appealing books, and they get to choose what they want. They get a largely unsupervised book-shopping experience in a book wonderland set up just for them.
Listen, it’s one thing to have plenty to read as a child. But, when I think back to my childhood—my elementary school years, like 12 and under—I did not have a lot of agency in what I read. I think things are a bit different now and kids have more choice in what they read but when I was a kid the books that I had available to read were:
Books chosen for me by my parents;
Books chosen for me by other adults and gifted to me;
Books chosen for me by teachers at school;
Hand-me-down books that had belonged older generations of my family; and
My parents’ books (books for adults).
I began to select my own books to read from bookstores when I was a preteen. I would go to the bookshop in the mall and choose an RL Stine, Ann M Martin, or Francine Pascal book and then take it to my parents and ask them to buy it for me. Buying books independently, like walking into a store and choosing a book for myself and buying it with money I controlled myself, started in my teen years.
But when the Scholastic Book Fair came around to my school, Mom and Dad gave me some money to take to school and shop for books, which was magical. I usually decided in advance what I wanted from the pamphlet but if I changed my mind and I had enough money in my pocket I could get whatever I wanted. I didn’t have to ask anyone.
Not that my parents ever said no to a book. I was allowed to read whatever I wanted that I could find in the house or the school library or my friends’ houses or the public library or whatever. I was only ever expressly forbidden to read one book as a child, which was Gerald’s Game by Stephen King, so naturally I read that first.
But even so, the experience of independent book shopping without parental supervision was so fun and formative and I have very fond memories of it still. This is obviously completely wholesome and nothing about it could be controversial.
Earlier this month, Scholastic publicly announced its "Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice" collection. This collection made up of 64 titles including:
A biography of Supreme Court Justice Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The picture books Change Sings by inaugural poet Amanda Gorman.
Thanhhà Lai’s novel in verse, When Clouds Touch Us.
I Color Myself Different by Colin Kaepernick.
She Dared: Malala Yousafzai by Jenni L. Walsh.
You can get the full list of titles here.
This collection was created expressly to remove these books from the principal Scholastic Book Fair title offerings so schools could opt out of receiving them.
In an October 13, 2023, press release, Scholastic announced and explained this decision and the reasoning behind it. To summarize the release:
More than 30 US states now have legislation or pending legislation restricting the content that may be made available in public schools.
The restricted content typically is anything that mentions the LGBTQ+ community (“Don’t Say Gay”) or the presence (or history) of racism in this country.
Therefore, to make sure schools in states that ban these books can still host the Scholastic Book Fair, the collection was created to allow schools to opt out of “diverse” titles—either the whole collection, or individual titles from it.
I will note that, based on my examination of the titles in the collection, the presence of or mention of race/racism and LGBTQ+ identities appeared to be the reason why most of the titles made the list, but there are also books on cultural acceptance (Mommy's Khimar by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow) and disability acceptance (You Are Enough by Margaret O’Hair).
I think books about women being great must be on the chopping block, too, or else I can’t understand what’s controversial about Malala Yousafzai. She literally just wants girls to be able to go to school, that’s her thing. Girls learning to read should really not be controversial in the United States in this year of our Lorde 2023.
Scholastic’s press release on the segregated book collection came after The Mary Sue published two articles on the topic, “Scholastic Under Fire for Allowing Schools to Opt Out of ‘Diverse Books’ for Book Fairs” and “Parents and Authors On How Scholastic Treats Books About Children of Color,” which reports that:
Librarians reported on social media that they were explicitly asked “if” they wanted diverse books at their school’s book fairs.
At least one librarian who affirmed they did opt in to receive the "Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice" collection received the books in that collection separately from the rest of the fair’s books three days after the fair started.
Further, the "Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice" collection, which comes packed in a separate case, arrives with the following printed note packed inside:
We’ve included the requested "Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice" collection with your Book Fair assortment. If you believe this was received in error, please set it aside for your school’s Fair pickup. If you have any additional questions or concerns, reach out to your Fair consultant.
I have seen a photograph of this note (I transcribed the above from that photo) but it’s posted on a membership-only site so I cannot reproduce the original here. I will briefly assert that none of the other cases of books sent to the host schools arrive with a note explaining what to do with these particular books if the school doesn’t approve of them.
A number of Scholastic authors and illustrators; authors not affiliated with Scholastic; school and community librarians; teachers and other education and literacy professionals; the advocacy group PEN America; pretty much all of BookTwt, BookTok, and Bookstagram; and a number of prominent publishing industry people came down on Scholastic rapidly and condemned the decision to segregate “diverse” titles into an opt-in collection.
(While Scholastic calls the collection “opt-out” the fact that librarians are being asked “if” they want to receive diverse books at their fairs indicates the collection is, in fact, opt-in.)
An important facet of the backlash against Scholastic is that, as a billion-dollar company and the largest publisher and distributor in the world of books for children, they are one of the best equipped parties—if not the best equipped—to stand up to censorship and book banning and for access to reading material for young people (which is kinda what the Scholastic Book Fair is all about?). Instead of leveraging their very popular, very influential book fair program to keep books of all kinds accessible to kids everywhere, they developed an option to introduce segregation to their book fair.
Can’t let those bible belt bucks get away from you, right?
An interesting fact about book banning and censorship, discovered by journalists at The Washington Post (article behind paywall) is that eleven individuals are behind the majority of book bans in the United States. Not “eleven organizations with many members each” or “an average of eleven people in each state.” Eleven individual people.
This means they’re not challenging books just in their child’s school, or school district, or in their county, or their state. They are challenging books across the country because they want access to these books restricted not from their own child or children but from all children, everywhere. Everybody’s children, including your children if you have them. They’re not content micromanaging what their own children read, they want to micromanage what everyone’s children have access to. Book challenges and bans are not limited solely to school libraries. Community public libraries are also affected.
The good news is, Scholastic redirected following the immediate and very loud backlash and announced in an October 25, 2023, press release that they are canceling the separate collection beginning in January and will reintegrate the titles into the primary book fair assortment and are looking for ways to serve librarians and educators in states with legislation restricting access to books.
Let the kids read Gerald’s Game already. I did and I obviously turned out great.
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