12 Picture Books to Read During Banned Books Week

This year, Banned Books Week is September 26 to October 2. I’ve always been deeply passionate about being opposed to censorship and celebrating the freedom to read, but one of the first things to awaken me to this was realising as a child that picture books were often the target of book bans and challenges. The idea that books meant for young children were being challenged was baffling and infuriating. Realising that the reasons these picture books were being banned was for featuring LGBTQ+ characters or difficult subject matter was truly radicalising. More recently there’s been an even bigger problem with fearmongering about “critical race theory” being taught to children (which is not based in reality) leading to white parents challenging books, including picture books, for featuring characters of colour. Recently this most notably manifested as a Pennsylvania school district banning an entire list of diverse titles for being diverse, although this has fortunately been overturned (but should never have happened at all in the first place). With all of this in mind, I have compiled a list of twelve picture books that have faced bans and challenges over the years.

Note: This is not intended to be a complete list, more of a list of recommended titles. You can read previous Banned Books Week recommendations by checking out our “banned books” category. For this list I have pulled from the ALA top ten frequently challenged lists, the York Central Banned Diversity List, and news reports, with some titles having appeared in more than one place.

This Day In June by Gayle E. Pitman, illustrated by Kristyna Litten

This Day In June follows the wonder and delight of a Pride celebration. It includes a Reading Guide about LGBTQ+ history and a parents’ guide about how to talk to kids about gender and sexuality. It has appeared on the ALA’s Top 10 Most Challenged Books list, where they note it has been “challenged and burned for including LGBTQIA+ content.”

Sulwe by Lupita Nyong’o, illustrated by Vashti Harrison

Sulwe is the story of a young girl named Sulwe who has darker skin than anyone else in her family or school and how she wishes her skin were lighter like her family. Sulwe goes on a magical journey where she learns to love her beauty for what it is. Despite its message of self love and anti-colourism (although more likely because of said message), it was included on the York Central banned list.

Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Pakistan by Jeanette Winter

Nasreen’s Secret School tells the story of Nasreen, a young girl who lives with her grandmother after her parents have disappeared. It is illegal for girls to attend school, but Nasreen is able to come out of her shell more as she attends a secret school for girls. The book has appeared on the ALA’s Top 10 Most Challenged Books list, where the reasons cited were “religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group, and violence.”

Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry, illustrated by Vashti Harrison

Hair Love is the story of a girl whose dad learns to style her hair for a special occasion. It’s a beautiful story of daddy and daughter bonding time and love for natural hair. You can watch the short film of it on Youtube. It appeared on the York Central banned list, making it clear that the primary target of this banned list was works by Black creators for Black children.

And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, illustrated by Henry Cole

And Tango Makes Three is the story of two mated male penguins at the zoo who “adopt” an egg and raise a baby penguin together. It is based on a true story. It has appeared on the Top 10 Most Challenges Books list nine times since it was published, with different lists of reasons featured each time, although “homosexuality” is the persistent complaint.

The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi

The Name Jar is about a young girl who has moved from Korea to North America. Since she is worried about whether her classmates will be able to pronounce her name, she decides to choose an anglicized name. With encouragement from her classmates, she ends up choosing her Korean name and teaching her new friends to pronounce it. It was included on the York Central banned list.

Prince & Knight by Daniel Haack, illustrated by Stevie Lewis

Prince & Knight is a fairytale style story about a prince and a knight who fall in love during a heroic adventure and get married. It appeared on the ALA’s Top Ten Most Challenged Books list, with the explanation that it was “challenged and restricted for featuring a gay marriage and LGBTQIA+ content; for being “a deliberate attempt to indoctrinate young children” with the potential to cause confusion, curiosity, and gender dysphoria; and for conflicting with a religious viewpoint.”

Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation by Duncan Tonatiuh

Separate Is Never Equal is about Sylvia Mendez being told she had to attend a segregated Mexican school in California, and her family’s resulting lawsuit. Her family’s lawsuit led to the end of segregated schooling in California in 1947. It was on the York Central banned list, as well as currently facing a challenge in Tennessee “because it features contemporaneous quotes uttered by White segregationists in court.”

Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story by Kevin Noble Maillard, illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal

Fry Bread is about making fry bread with your family and friends. “It is a celebration of old and new, traditional and modern, similarity and difference.” It serves as an ode to fry bread, the magic of making it with people you care about, and includes a recipe at the end. It was on the York Central banned list.

I Am Jazz by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings, illustrated by Shelagh McNicholas

I Am Jazz is a picture book about the life of Jazz Jennings, a transgender activist and TV and internet personality. Having appeared on TV to talk about being trans at the age of 6 (she is now 20), she is one of the youngest publicly documented trans people. The book has appeared on the ALA Top Ten Most Challenged Books list four times, with it most recently being “challenged and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content, for a transgender character, and for confronting a topic that is “sensitive, controversial, and politically charged”.”

The Book Itch: Freedom, Truth, and Harlem’s Greatest Bookstore by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie

The Book Itch is about Lewis Michaux and his shop, the African National Memorial Bookstore. The story is told from the perspective of his son, showing the wonders of this Harlem-based bookstore, the impact it had on the community, and the famous figures it drew, such as Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, and Langston Hughes. It was on the York Central banned list.

A Day In The Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss, illustrated by E.G. Keller

A Day In The Life of Marlon Bundo was presented by Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in response to former Vice President Pence’s daughter releasing a book about the family bunny. It is about the very same bunny falling in love with another boy bunny. It featured twice on the ALA’s Top Ten Most Challenged Books list, with them stating most recently that it was “challenged and vandalized for LGBTQIA+ content and political viewpoints, for concerns that it is “designed to pollute the morals of its readers,” and for not including a content warning.”

Lite Reads Review: ‘The Second Sense’ by Nadine Gordimer

Week ninety-nine of Lite Reads comes to a close as we finish our selection The Second Sense by Nadine Gordimer. There were questions as food for thought on social media as people had the chance to read it and think about it. Before I announce the next Lite Reads selection (October 4), I will be sharing my own thoughts here. Spoilers ahead for those who have not read the story yet.

The Second Sense by Nadine Gordimer, published in 2007 in Gordimer’s short story collection Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black, tells the story of Ferenc, a Hungarian immigrant in South Africa. Despite his doctorate of philosophy, Ferenc is unable to get a job in his field because he struggles to learn new languages fluently and ends up working in a storeroom. His wife Zsuzsana initially does work as a seamstress from home, but as she becomes more successful and becomes proficient in English she gains new opportunities and switches to work in real estate. He essentially stays in the same place in life and struggles to connect with their son while she becomes successful and close with their son, although she is hardly around. Eventually she leaves him, with Zsuzsana feeling completely at home in her new life and Ferenc feeling as though he is in exile.

I feel like outside of stories of refugees, almost all of the immigrant stories I’ve read have been set in the USA, the UK, or Canada, so I thought it was really interesting to see the story of an immigrant in South Africa in The Second Sense. It was refreshing to read a perspective that I wasn’t used to. I thought the way Gordimer portrayed Ferenc’s struggles was very realistic, with his problems in picking up the new language and his inability to get a job in his own field being an issue for many immigrants around the world. I also thought it was interesting to see the ways in which the struggles he faced were specific to South Africa. One example is that although South Africa has eleven official languages, Ferenc is unable to gain proficient enough skills in any of the languages to teach philosophy in any of them, leaving him feeling othered for the duration of his life in South Africa. Zsuzsana serves as a contrast for this, because her own proficiency in English allows her to seem exotic rather than foreign, which she is able to earn her success off of, although her own proficiency in English only comes from the close social contact she had with her clients as a seamstress, a type of social interaction Ferenc never would have had access to while working in a storeroom.

I was really interested in the devolution of Ferenc and Zsuzsana’s marriage, particularly since we spend a lot of time slowly watching their relationship fail, but we didn’t spend much time with them coming together as husband and wife or as parents. It isn’t something I’d say I enjoy (I think I’m too much of a sucker for the romance genre to really get a lot out of watching relationships fall apart), but it was interesting to watch unfold. It was fairly clear early in the story that their relationship wouldn’t last just because of how drastically different their paths in life became. When they were both doing blue collar work, they seemed to operate on the same wavelength, but his resentment seemed to grow with each moment she surpassed him despite her limited education, ranging from when she becomes fluent in English to when she becomes a successful real estate agent and primary earner for the household. His resentment seems to peak when she suggest he work in an international department of the company she works for because of his education, but he seems to seethe with the idea knowing that his degree would likely not be useful for the position. Their expectations of one another shift beyond the point of no return.

Although The Second Sense was written and published in post-apartheid South Africa, Gordimer (an anti-apartheid activist and writer) is acutely aware of its legacy and doesn’t leave you to lose yourself in the immigrant struggles long enough to forget that apartheid is a recent history, whiteness comes with power and privilege and Black South Africans are often more equal on paper than in practice. Ferenc struggles because he doesn’t speak any of the eleven official languages fluently, but it is noted that these languages only became official post-apartheid as most of these languages are languages spoken by the Indigenous groups within South Africa, ones that were suppressed during apartheid. Wealthy and powerful white people are noted as having gone to countries like the USA and Australia where they perceived Indigenous rights as a non-issue, with Indigenous peoples having “been effectively dealt with.” Even in the end, when we hear of Zsuzsana’s life after Ferenc, her comfortable life is one of wealth and privilege where her Black cook is listed among her appliances. In colonized countries (including, but not limited to, South Africa), wealthy white immigrants who speak the local language might be seen as an exotic novelty, but people of colour, immigrants who don’t speak the language, people experiencing poverty, and other marginalised groups will always be seen as other.

Overall, The Second Sense by Nadine Gordimer was an interesting story to explore intellectually, but it wasn’t really to my taste. Basically, I enjoyed thinking about it more than I actually enjoyed reading it. I would still be interested in reading Gordimer’s novels (as I haven’t read any of them yet).

I hope everyone who participated by reading the story and following along on social media enjoyed reading this short story. If you have more thoughts to add, please feel free to comment on this post, or anywhere on The Feminist Bibliothecary’s social media. Our one hundredth week begins shortly, October 5, with a brand new short story selection especially for the Halloween season!

The Things I’ve Learned From Reading Banned Books

Today is the last day of this year’s Banned Books Week, a favourite literary occasion for me. Seeing the books that have been banned or challenged in the past and present, in places all over the world, is endlessly fascinating and endlessly infuriating. I think it’s such a wonderful opportunity to enjoy our freedom to read while also exploring the ways we can truly make that freedom a reality for everyone. The chance to talk about books and about access to books is a chance I would never pass up.

One of the things that has been at the forefront of my mind during our current Banned Books Week is the multitude of things I have learned from reading banned books. I mean this in both senses: the things I have learned from the individual books themselves and the things I have learned from exploring the books that have been banned or challenged.

I remember, as a child, my earliest experiences with the knowledge of banned books was that children’s fantasy novels would face bans and challenges because they were deemed “satanic.” This concept was just so absurd to me that I didn’t think about any deeper meaning behind the act of banning books, I just assumed that the folks banning books were not only being melodramatic, but were probably like the strictest of my friends’ parents, like the ones who wouldn’t let my friends watch The Simpsons or read comic books. I don’t think I was entirely incorrect in my assessment, but it lacked the insights I’ve gained over time.

Some of the first books I fell in love with growing up were books I would later learn had been banned or challenged in some areas and schools. These were books I would have been reading from the late 90s to the mid 00s. Often these books were meant for my age group (as well as some selections targeted to children who were slightly older than I was), but were deemed “inappropriate” because of genre more than anything. Fantasy and horror and humour novels that were meant for children and actually managed to engage young nonreaders in a way that many books did not manage were often banned for being satanic or violent or gross. While not every child is going to respond to this type of literature, that can be said of all genres and story types, and providing children with this diversity of story is one of the best ways to engage them in reading and writing.

The other banned books I read during that timeframe were banned for what I would consider a more nefarious reason, which is their emotional impact or realism. Books where pets or friends die, books where siblings struggle with addiction, books where parents aren’t supportive or are even abusive. Parents (who, for the most part, probably mean well) want to keep their children from experiencing sadness and trauma so that they can enjoy childhood to the fullest. This thought process comes with a variety of problems, with two of them being the most serious: the first is that we can’t shield our children from things that might hurt them, no matter how much we may want to, so allowing them to experience these difficult facts through books allows them to be more prepared in the event they experience it and more compassionate to their peers who are already experiencing it; the second problem is that banning books in libraries and schools prevents all children from accessing the books, which means that children experiencing serious home life and school troubles won’t have access to books that help them deal with and understand the things they are experiencing. Both of these things are major problems. I know that when I was a child (and a teen and an adult) books helped me feel prepared for things I hadn’t yet experienced, they made me feel like I wasn’t alone in what I was experiencing when I felt most alone, and they made me feel compassionate towards kids who struggled in ways that I previously struggled to comprehend. The idea of depriving children of these experiences has been one that has always been particularly abhorrent to me.

With the ways my reading habits and access to books has changed over the years, as well as the ways the publishing industry has adapted and expanded over the years, there are things about book bans and challenges that I have only come to realise in adulthood. Most urgently, what I’ve realised is that books that are written by and starring characters from the most marginalised identities are usually the first to be banned. Perhaps this is something I would have realised sooner were it not for my privileged upbringing; I didn’t know I was queer as a child and I hadn’t yet become chronically ill, disabled, or fat and I hadn’t yet experienced poverty. Perhaps if I had had more access to certain reading materials, I would have realised sooner that I was queer. Perhaps I might have been better prepared for the realities of chronic illness and disability. Perhaps I might have been able to sympathise with a broader variety of experiences if I’d had access to that type of literature sooner. There’s truly no way of telling.

What I do know is that even though material featuring race, class, sexuality, gender identity, migration, disability, and more are all actually being published widely and in the mainstream, these are the books facing the most bans and challenges today. For example, if you look at the Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2019 as published by the ALA, eight out of ten books were challenged because of LGBTQIA+ content. That isn’t a coincidence. LGBTQIA+ content has been banned, challenged, and burned throughout history. The library of the Institute for Sexual Research was a major subject of Nazi book burnings, with more than ten thousand progressive works of LGBTQIA+ research burned in 1933. Bans and challenges always manage to further marginalise books that are about (and often written by) individuals and and groups that are the most marginalised in our society. It is a tool of oppression and fascism.

What I’ve learned in reading banned books and exploring their legacy is that they prevent children from experiencing the joys of reading, stop children from understanding difficulties they may face, and make children and adults alike less likely to see themselves reflected in the stories they read. I’ve also learned that book bans almost always serve the dominant powers and bring actual and tangible harm to already marginalised people. I’ve always been against banning books, but if I had known even a decade ago what I know now, I might have been more vocal sooner, and I might have been vocal in ways that I wasn’t at the time.

This week, I wrote a letter to my local library about a children’s book they have shelved with the adult content in the hopes of increasing the availability of this literature to those who were meant to read it. I hope that you will speak out whenever you see a book being challenged or banned, in whatever ways you can. Celebrating your freedom to read during Banned Books Week and reading books that have faced bans and challenges is one of many small ways you can push back against book bans. You can donate to relevant causes. You can be loud when books are challenged in your own schools, libraries, and communities.

Lite Reads Selection: ‘The Second Sense’ by Nadine Gordimer

Welcome to The Feminist Bibliothecary’s Lite Reads, where we read a different short story every week, and then discuss it here and on social media. Chosen especially for Banned Books Week, this week’s Lite Reads selection is The Second Sense by Nadine Gordimer!

The Second Sense by Nadine Gordimer was published in 2007 in Gordimer’s short story collection Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black and in the Virginia Quarterly Review. The story centres a Hungarian immigrant in a changing South Africa.

Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014) was a writer and activist. Born in South Africa to Jewish immigrant parents, Gordimer was prominent for many years in the anti-apartheid movement, which was reflected in her extensive writing catalog. Several of her books were banned by the South African government because the books directly and indirectly criticised apartheid. Her activism included anti-apartheid and anti-censorship work, as well as criticism of the South African government’s response to the AIDS crisis. Some of her best known works include A World of Strangers (1958), Burger’s Daughter (1979), and July’s People (1981), all of which were banned by the South African government, and her Booker Prize winning novel The Conservationist (1974). She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991 because of the impact her works had on the anti-apartheid movement. She died at the age of ninety.

The Second Sense was chosen especially for Banned Books Week not because it was specifically banned, but because Gordimer’s works were the subject of banning by the South African government. Banned Books Week is a great chance to celebrate her body of work and to use it to explore why books are banned (and shouldn’t be).

You can read The Second Sense by Nadine Gordimer in full for free on the Virginia Quarterly Review website. I was unable to find an audio version of this story, and I apologise for any trouble this causes.

If you are interested in exploring our previous Banned Books Week Lite Reads selections, here are the links to access those posts:

Lite Reads Selection: The Lottery by Shirley Jackson (2018)

Lite Reads Review: The Lottery by Shirley Jackson (2018)

Lite Reads Selection: Dilli Ki Sair by Rashid Jahan (2019)

Lite Reads Review: Dilli Ki Sair by Rashid Jahan (2019)

Join us in the comments section here, or on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or Instagram, to participate in discussions throughout the week. You can also join in on the discussion at Litsy by following @elizabethlk and the #litereads hashtag. Our full review will be available Saturday, October 3.

Lite Reads Review: ‘Dilli Ki Sair’ by Rashid Jahan

Week fifty-seven of Lite Reads comes to a close as we finish our Banned Books Week selection Dilli Ki Sair by Rashid Jahan. There were questions as food for thought on social media as people had the chance to read it and think about it. Before I announce the next Lite Reads selection (September 29), I will be sharing my own thoughts here. Spoilers ahead for those who haven’t finished reading the story yet.

Dilli Ki Sair by Rashid Jahan, translated from Urdu to English by Syeda S. Hameed and Sughra Mehdi, is a very short piece of Urdu literature from the widely banned anthology Angaaray. The title in English is A Trip to Delhi, and the story features a woman telling her friends about what the trip was like for her as a woman, and one from a smaller community visiting a city. Although the story is very short, it manages to cover the complete discomfort, even fear, the narrator felt on her trip, especially around the strange men and the newness of a big city.

It’s easy to see how Dilli Ki Sair could have been controversial, although I find it hard to imagine something so brief stirring up controversy without being part of a larger collection of stories. I can definitely find it easy to imagine that an anthology that would include this story in 1931 would have been widely banned. Depicting women, especially religious and burqa-clad women, as being so open and crass with one another definitely struck me as something folks could have a problem with. It is also hard to imagine that Jahan’s contemporaries would have taken kindly to her depictions of men being crass to women and making them feel afraid on visits to the city.

I think the contrast between women speaking to each other and women being spoken to by men are especially striking. The woman telling her story is abrupt, full of swears, and completely willing to be open about complaints about her surroundings. But we can clearly see that when she was actually in Delhi, in Purdah, her experience seems completely different than with her interactions with other women. She is intimidated by men who are different from herself, but she seems equally intimidated by men from a similar background as herself. Her burqa doesn’t shield her from street harassment. Even her husband seems to have no idea of how uncomfortable she is or why she would even be uncomfortable, despite the restrictions that he would obviously know that she would face.

I think it can be really interesting to read very short stories sometimes. Seeing how much plot or message or characterization an author can slip into a short space can be interesting and impressive to view. I think Jahan has clearly managed to fit some impressive points into such a small space, although it also feels like there isn’t a lot of story here, but perhaps something was lost in translation or I missed cultural cues. I do think it’s interesting to see the way she has used a character narrating the story to other characters to make the best use of the space.

Overall, Dilli Ki Sair by Rashid Jahan was an interesting read, although I have a hard time saying that I enjoyed it. I appreciate it for what it is, but it isn’t the kind of story you lose yourself in (although perhaps other readers will experience this differently than I did). I’m definitely most likely to only recommend this story during Banned Books Week, but I wouldn’t recommend against it either. I would be interested in reading a translation of the full anthology.

I hope everyone who participated by reading the story and following along on social media enjoyed the story. If you have more thoughts to add, please feel free to comment on this post, or anywhere on The Feminist Bibliothecary’s social media. Week fifty-eight begins tomorrow, September 29, with a brand new short story selection, chosen as the first of our spooky fall reads.