There is now enacted or pending legislation in more than 30 U.S. states prohibiting certain kinds of books from being in schools – mostly LGBTQIA+ titles and books that engage with the presence of racism in our country. Because Scholastic Book Fairs are invited into schools, where books can be purchased by kids on their own, these laws create an almost impossible dilemma: back away from these titles or risk making teachers, librarians, and volunteers vulnerable to being fired, sued, or prosecuted.
To continue offering these books, as well as even more high interest titles, we created an additional collection called Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice for our U.S. elementary school fairs. We cannot make a decision for our school partners around what risks they are willing to take, based on the state and local laws that apply to their district, so these topics and this collection have been part of many planning calls that happen in advance of shipping a fair.
While this is fucked up, and I don’t support the bans, ever generation has it’s banned books that are essentially harmless. I’m 37 and remembered hearing about Catcher In The Rye being banned and I thought it was going to be something raunchy. I read some of it years later and was like “this is it?!”
I love that Scholastic is standing strong. My mom still has a magnet on her fridge that I bought for her like 30 years ago at a book fair that says “I love you, Mom!”. The book fairs were the shit back in the day.