Missing from the Shelf: Book Challenges and Lack of Diversity In
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MISSING FROM THE SHELF Book Challenges and Lack of Diversity in Children's Literature 1 MISSING FROM THE SHELF Book Challenges and Lack of Diversity in Children's Literature August 31, 2016 © 2016 PEN America. All rights reserved. PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. Founded in 1922, PEN America is the largest of more than 100 centers of PEN International. Our strength is in our membership—a nationwide community of more than 4,000 novelists, journalists, poets, essayists, playwrights, editors, publishers, translators, agents, and other writing professionals. For more information, visit pen.org All photographs courtesy the US Department of Education. CONTENTS Introduction 4 Overview and Methodology 5 Banning Books in the United States? Challenges and Withdrawals of Books in Schools and Libraries 6 Soft Censorship: The Books That Never Make It to School Shelves 12 Absent Stories : A Dearth of Children’s and Young Adult Books about People of Color 13 Driving the Conversation Forward: Making Change and Challenging Offensive Representations of People of Color 18 Moving Forward: Best Practices and Approaches to Consider 21 Acknowledgments 23 Endnotes 24 INTRODUCTION Reading is a formative part of childhood: educating, wid- ening horizons, offering adventures and stoking imagina- The benefits of tion and creativity. Books for children and young adults are not often thought of as a free expression battle- broader inclusion and ground in the United States—and yet every year, hundreds of demands to remove books from schools or libraries representation would are made by parents, library patrons, school boards, and others because of concerns that a book’s subject matter redound not only to is inappropriate or harmful to children. Children’s books are also a potent cultural bellwether, both reflecting and children of color and shaping attitudes on a wide range of social, political, and moral issues. members of minority or For many years, PEN America has served as a gathering place and a locus of reflection and mobilization for children’s marginalized groups, book authors through our Children’s and Young Adult Book Committee. That committee has led our work on issues but to all children who concerning children’s book challenges and our participation in the National Coalition against Censorship, urging schools look to literature as a and libraries across the United States to keep challenged books in circulation, allowing children and their parents to mirror of the society in make individual choices about what material is appropriate while maintaining access to a broad and diverse range of which they live. material for students.1 Thanks to this work, as well as to efforts by parents, young readers, teachers, librarians, and public officials to defend open access to children’s literature, at a time when the U.S. is becoming more and more ethni- many book challenges are ultimately unsuccessful. cally diverse as a country: Children of color now make up While book challenges and bans have been an important more than half of the kids in public schools in the United focus for librarians and anti-censorship advocates includ- States, and their numbers continue to grow.3 According ing PEN America for several generations, PEN America’s to the United States Census Bureau, by 2020 more than mission to promote literature as a means to transcend half of all children in the United States will be non-white, boundaries, foster dialogue, and amplify unheard voices and the U.S. population as a whole will become “majority has compelled a broader focus for our work in the field minority” by 2044.4 Yet several influential studies have of children’s books. Increasingly, our attention as an or- documented the relative paucity of children’s literature ganization has focused on the importance of children’s that features characters and storylines reflecting the ex- literature as a vehicle to enable younger generations to perience of people of color and other marginalized people reach new levels of understanding and inclusion across and groups, and those who differ from the majority and social divides, and on impediments to realizing the po- mainstream. Population trends underscore the urgency tential of children’s literature to serve as a catalyst for to take steps to ensure better representation of partic- acceptance. For example, an examination of current pat- ular minority groups in children’s literature. The benefits terns of challenges to children’s books reveals that a large of broader inclusion and representation would redound portion relate to children’s and young adult books that are not only to children of color and members of minority or either authored by or are about people of color, LGBTQ marginalized groups, but to all children who look to litera- people, and/or disabled people (referred to in this report ture as a mirror of the society in which they live. PEN has as “diverse books”).2 And even if a particular challenge assembled several online dialogues through our Equity in fails, teachers and librarians are aware that diverse books Publishing roundtable series on the question of how to may draw unwanted scrutiny, prompting some of them to promote greater representivity in publishing, and presents avoid assigning these books or putting them into library this report in an effort to catalyze attention, debate, and circulation in the first place. action to enable children’s literature to help lead the way This restricts schoolchildren’s access to diverse books toward a more inclusive and equal society. 4 PEN AMERICA OVERVIEW AND METHODOLOGY This report begins with an overview of book challenges continues with an overview of how social media has helped and bans in the United States, detailing the extent to which amplify and broaden the conversation about representa- books face challenges, the processes parents, teachers, tion of people of color in children’s and young adult books, librarians, and lawmakers go through when a book is chal- and concludes with a presentation of suggestions from lenged, and the broader impact of these challenges. The authors, readers, editors and other publishing personnel, report then examines how these actions disproportion- and advocates on how to improve diversity in publishing ately affect books by or about people of color and LGBTQ and increase the availability of diverse books. people, limiting children’s access to books that accurately This report is based on a review of news and analyti- reflect and depict a wide range of individual identities cal reports on book challenges and bans, diversity in the and experiences. It then discusses some of the reasons publishing industry, and representation of people of color books by or about people of color are underrepresented in children’s and young adult books, as well as phone and in children’s and young adult literature, including the pub- email interviews with authors, editors, academics, advo- lishing industry’s relative lack of staff diversity. The report cates, and others focused on these topics. FREE EXPRESSION IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE 5 age-inappropriate, although broader concerns about a BANNING BOOKS IN book’s perceived worldview or ideology can also moti- vate a challenge. Parents may lodge challenges to a book THE UNITED STATES? because they do not want their children to be exposed Challenges and Withdrawals of Books to violent or sex-related content, or content that violates family religious beliefs. in Schools and Libraries For example, Robie H. Harris’s It’s Perfectly Normal (Can- dlewick), a sex education book for children ages 10 and older, has sold over a million copies, but is also “one of While the notion of book banning tends to evoke a yel- the most banned books of the past two decades.”8 J.K. lowed American past or faraway repressive regimes, hun- Rowling’s acclaimed Harry Potter series (Scholastic), the dreds of books are challenged or banned in the United first book of which was published in 1997, was by 2000 States each year.5 the most challenged book series in the U.S., according to The American Library Association (ALA) defines a the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual book challenge as “a formal, written complaint, filed with Freedom, which keeps a register of book challenges re- a library or school requesting that materials be removed ported by librarians nationwide.9 The Harry Potter books because of content or appropriateness.”6 A book ban is have been called pagan, Satanic, anti-religious, offensive, the result when such a challenge succeeds and books are inappropriate, and dangerous—and were for a time emblem- withdrawn from library or classroom shelves or circulation.7 atic of the fight for free expression in children’s literature.10 Book challenges are most often initiated not by state or Contested books often challenge the way that people local authorities, but by parents or concerned community “like to think of childhood, as this sweet time,” says chil- members who believe a certain book is inappropriate dren’s author Meg Medina, whose book Yaqui Delgado for children, and seek to have it removed from a school Wants to Kick Your Ass (Candlewick) has been frequently or public library, or taken off a school reading list. Usu- challenged.11 Millie Davis, an English teacher who directs ally, the rationale proffered is an urge to protect children the Intellectual Freedom Center of the National Council from themes, content, or language that is argued to be for Teachers of English, thinks that book challenges risk 6 PEN AMERICA Number of Challenged Books Recorded by Year12 Ye a r 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 Challenged 275 311 307 464 326 348 Books depriving children of essential opportunities to learn to a challenge.