For the past twenty years, the American Library Association (ALA) has given out an annual award called the Schneider Family Book Award. The award honors an author or illustrator for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for young audiences.
The ALA recently announced the 2024 winners. This inspired me to go to the website of Moms for Liberty to see if these books, or any of the award-winning books from previous years, are on their hit list. I was very disappointed when I discovered it appears that none of them are.
Moms for Liberty wants us all to believe that authors and illustrators are conspiring with publishers, librarians, and other such communists to flood the market with subversive books intended to corrupt and indoctrinate children and adolescents. And nobody would know about this if they weren’t blowing the whistle.
If I was one of those award winners, I’d be pretty upset about that. It’s probably very fulfilling to win a Schneider Family Book Award. But there is no greater badge of honor that could be bestowed upon me for writing a children’s book about disability than to know that it upsets Moms for Liberty.
One book Moms for Liberty is all frothed up about is All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson. The book’s publisher describes it as “a series of personal essays” in which Johnson “explores his childhood and adolescence growing up as a gay Black man.” It’s written for a young adult audience. But Moms for Liberty spokespersons say it is inappropriate because it deals with subjects like rape and masturbation.
There is no greater badge of honor that could be bestowed upon me for writing a children’s book about disability than to know that it upsets Moms for Liberty.
Surely, with a little effort, Moms for Liberty could get even a little worked up about the book Forever is Now, one of this year’s winners of the Schneider Family Book Award. The protagonist, Sadie, has a passion for social justice and thus she is set off on a downward emotional spiral when she witnesses a violent act of police brutality. That sounds like commie talk to me. Not to mention Sadie is queer.
And I bet Moms for Liberty could find something even mildly objectionable about the book The Fire, the Water, and Maudie McGinn, another award winner. It’s about a young girl who is displaced by a California wildfire. Doesn’t that smack of climate change propaganda?
It appears that groups like Moms for Liberty, which claim to be crusading to preserve the pristine innocence of minors by limiting their access to offensive reading material, are primarily offended by reading material that depicts American society and history in anything other than a righteous and patriotic light.
So if I wrote a book about disability that didn’t offend them at all, I’d be worried that my book had nothing of substance to say. I’d sure like to believe that disabled people can be subversive, too.