Who knew kids reading books could cause such panic?
First, a school district in Florida banned dictionaries from its libraries on the grounds that allowing students to read them violates HB 1069, which lets residents demand the removal of any library book that “depicts or describes sexual conduct.”
Now, elementary school libraries in Indian River County, Florida, are drawing overalls on a goblin and little shorts on a Maurice Sendak character—all in response to a Moms for Liberty complaint that a handful of children’s books showing figures drawn without clothing are “pornographic.”
Maybe you know Sendak’s “In the Night Kitchen,” a Caldecott Honor Award Winner first published in 1970, about a little boy named Mickey. Mickey’s dream world takes him overnight to the inner workings of a bakers’ kitchen, where the bakers sing, “Milk in the batter! Milk in the batter! We bake cake and nothing’s the matter!”
Except Mickey didn’t have clothes on. And a goblin washing glitter out of his artist’s smock in Alex Willan’s “Unicorns Are the Worst” didn’t have clothes on. And the man and woman in Carle’s “Draw Me a Star” didn’t have clothes on. And David in David Shannon’s “No, David!” didn’t have clothes on.
And Jennifer Pippin, the chair of the local Moms for Liberty chapter, decided that mattered.
“Pippin said she challenged these books, in part, because she believed the unaltered books violated two Florida statutes,” Popular Information reports. “The first is Florida’s obscenity law, which prohibits distributing to minors ‘any picture…which depicts nudity or sexual conduct, sexual excitement, sexual battery, bestiality, or sadomasochistic abuse and which is harmful to minors.’ Pippin claims the law prohibits all nudity in school library books.”
The law actually only prohibits nudity that specifically harms minors, Popular Information points out, which legally means that it appeals primarily to prurient, shameful or morbid interests, is patently offensive, and is without serious literary or artistic merit for minors.
But in an interview with Popular Information, Pippen said she worries that if a “5-year-old picks up this book and has never seen a picture of a penis … the parent wouldn’t be able to discuss this with the child.”
So officials suggested the school district draw little clothes on the characters.
Which they did.
And now the books are back on school library shelves.
It’s hard for me to wrap my head around this worldview that all bodies — children’s bodies, goblins’ bodies, hand-illustrated bodies — are inherently pornographic. Inherently shameful and prurient and offensive.
It doesn’t seem like a huge leap to imagine children who are influenced by that worldview wondering if their own bodies, then, are inherently pornographic, shameful, prurient, offensive. That’s a heavy burden to put on young people, especially when we want them to grow up and become healthy, happy humans with healthy, happy relationships — with their own bodies and other people’s.
But it’s a big world and we don’t all share the same worldview and there is, obviously, a growing movement to bring libraries and other spaces more in line with Pippen’s. The American Library Association documented 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022 — almost double the number of book ban attempts in 2021 and the highest number recorded since the group started compiling censorship data more than 20 years ago.
“The biggest change the Office of Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Association is seeing is challenges have gone from one concerned parent to challenges coming from an organized group,” said Monica Harris, executive director of Reaching Across Illinois Library System, a network of academic, public, school and specialized library agencies. “Often the materials are pre-gathered for them. They’re encouraging their followers to share the challenges with their followers. And many, many times the challengers live outside the district that the library they’re challenging serves.”
Libraries have a best practice plan for challenged books, Harris said. It requires the challenger to fill out a form stating what’s objectionable within the book and whether the challenger has read the entire book. While the challenge is being considered by the library staff or board, the book remains on the shelf.
Legislative efforts across the country are aiming to circumvent that plan, Harris said.
“They’re also trying to remove words like ‘obscenity’ from the process, which has a legal definition,” Harris said, “and replace it with terms like, ‘harmful to minors,’ which is much more open to interpretation.”
Harris encourages those of us who are alarmed by this movement to contact our local libraries and offer our support. Attend a library board meeting. A group named EveryLibrary tracks pending legislation, state by state, and provides “take action” links. Unite Against Book Bans, run by the American Library Association, provides a toolkit and other resources on its site.
“If people are interested in seeing a variety of materials that represent a variety of viewpoints in their libraries, the best thing they can do is get involved and voice their support,” Harris said.
Our kids, after all, are listening. Panic and shame shouldn’t be the loudest things they hear.
Join the Heidi Stevens Balancing Act Facebook group, where she continues the conversation around her columns and hosts occasional live chats.
Twitter @heidistevens13
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Rami G Khouri
Mort Laitner
Donald Low
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
Michael Kwet
visit website
