The Cultural Divide the Library Controversy Reveals

Considering all the emphasis on “the 53”, I finally wrote the Royal Examiner, identifying as one and summarizing the Library’s response to one of my Requests for Reconsideration.

A counter letter to the Royal Examiner, some of whose points in quotes follow, posits that any expectation on the part of a library patron that a book will actually be removed by following the official Library procedure petitioning for a book’s removal reveals, not a respect for due process, but rather (gasp): a “breathtaking degree of entitlement.” We can be grateful that Samuels is more broad-minded.

The book in question (“Prince & Knight”) is designed for 3 to 6-year-olds. It has pictures. So no, while 3 to 6-year-olds are not “driving themselves to the Library,” and while it is true that “most” 3-year-olds do not “read,” 3-year-olds can look at pictures, and plenty of 6-year-olds can read. It is easily imagined, to anyone with an imagination, that a parent or older sibling could be helping one child find “Where the Wild Things Are” while a second child, still in the guardian’s sight line, picks up an innocuous-looking book a few yards away. The innocuous-looking book has cute pictures of “Prince and Knight” as Groom and Groom. The inability of the parent to bi-locate does not render them irresponsible. Additionally, it appears necessary to note that a parent could potentially have more than one child to look after in the children’s section at Samuels.

These observations lose their snide potency upon cursory inspection, and they fail to offer a defense of the content of “Prince and Knight” or any other book whose removal was petitioned. This is a fight for our culture and the public square. Nobody objects to “Blueberries for Sal,”; or “Andy and the Lion,”; or “Mike Mulligan and the  Steam-shovel”; or “The Little House.” There are tons and tons of great children’s books that Samuels can fill their shelves with that won’t offend anybody, that isn’t promoting a controversial worldview, and that kids will love. Why not ‘curate’ those? The answer is becoming more obvious the longer the argument goes on: the fight is over children, and that fight has moved implacably to the public square. A worldview seems to be taking center stage that prioritizes sexualizing children, and it would seem to have a lot of money and institutional power behind it. Sure, we that oppose it can just “bow out” of the public square: but that cedes the public square to that worldview. I’m not trying to get a book into the Library titled: “Amy Has a Woman and a Man for a Mom and a Dad” or “You Can Only Marry a Person of the Opposite Sex and Other Cautionary Tales.” That’s just plain creepy. But somehow, nobody is supposed to be creeped out by clunkily intentional titles like “You Need to Chill” (a new book in Samuel’s children’s collection, which breezily informs any child who might be asking that it’s not strange a boy they knew just became a girl). Welcome to Happy Acres. And what’s with the “Need” of that particular title in the imperative tense? I thought all the “imposers” were on “our side.” — Apparently not.

Laura M. Clark
Warren County, Virginia

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