Posted on May 8, 2023 at 10:00 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek

Last month, author Maggie Tokuda-Hall shared how Scholastic offered her a contract — with the caveat that she remove some references to racism in her children's book, which shared her grandparents' experience in a Japanese internment camp.

She turned down the contract and took her concerns public, leading to a quick apology from the publisher.

The story, however, certainly hasn't gone away.

The New York Times reports that Scholastic immediately delayed production of the collection that was supposed to include Tokuda-Hall's Love in the Library (along with other collections aimed to feature marginalized voices) — that way, it could assess what had gone wrong.

Additionally, an author consulting on the collection resigned publicly in protest, and an elementary school librarian started a petition over the matter.

More than 650 librarians and educators have signed this request that Scholastic release the book with its original text and “take public responsibility for the decision to censor a book.”

For its part, Scholastic told the NY Times that it's taking a look at its "curatorial approach" and examining whether other books were edited in the same way that it sought to change Tokuda-Hall's.

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Categories: Today in Books

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