October 18th 2023.
Scholastic Books, one of the largest book companies in the world, has been hosting book fairs for years. However, this has come under scrutiny by librarians recently when they alleged that Scholastic allowed schools to decide if they wanted to have diverse books included. The company has created a “diverse books” category for publications featuring BIPOC characters, LGBTQ+ topics, immigration issues, and racism.
Author Kelly Jensen expressed her discontent with the decision, deeming it as “insidious” and one that librarians should “raise hell about”. This decision reflects conservative political efforts to censor books discussing race and LGBTQ+ themes, as seen in the states of Florida, Mississippi, and Iowa, which have enacted laws requiring schools to remove books that talk about these themes.
Librarians have been vocal about their dissatisfaction with Scholastic’s potential censorship of diverse books. One Reddit user posted, “Scholastic offers ‘bigotry button’ for school book fairs”, while TikTok user Tegan B revealed that they had opted to include diverse books in their book fair, but they were not received until three days after the fair had started. This meant that many students missed out on the chance to see themselves represented in the book fair.
The organization, BRAVE Book Fairs, is known to support the removal of diverse books from book fairs. They allege that Scholastic sneaks “dangerous and anti-biblical” books into schools to “expose kids to the LGBTQIA+ agenda”. This raises concerns for librarians and administrators who may now be forced to exclude certain books from their book fairs in order to keep their jobs.
This is an issue of great concern, as the American Library Association reported that the number of banned books in the U.S. has doubled since 2022. It is clear that something needs to be done to address this problem and ensure that every student has access to diverse books in their school book fairs.
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