Banned Books and Publishing Industry Censorship

By Amy Rothschild, early childhood educator

Banned Book week provides us the chance to reflect on what is and what isn’t available for us to read at different moments in history and different places. We think of Orwell, and we think of more recent events, like the banning of the Mexican American Studies program in Tucson, AZ.

Government censorship, of course, is just one element that determines what we can and cannot read. People often overlook another cultural phenomenon that can have a similar effect: publishing industry censorship. Each year there is a scarcity of excellent children’s picture books published. Missing are titles that reflect the realities of students’ lives and communities while encouraging children to think beyond the headlines.

The data bears out our suspicion: Researchers at the University of Wisconsin’s Cooperative Children’s Book Center find the number of books by and about people of color fluctuating and decreasing slightly, at the same time that children in the United States increasingly come from families of color. This doesn’t mean that those books aren’t being written—rather publishers refuse to seek them out or reject them, fearing they lack universal appeal, or as one frustrated former editor laments, fail to speak to “the lowest common denominator.” Zetta Elliott, author of the award-winning children’s book Bird, writes on her blog that she is fighting to find publishers for her many children’s book manuscripts. Some are “slice of life stories.” Others, like Bird, speak sensitively to childhood trauma.

Publishing industry censorship also occurs when excellent titles go out of print. Too often, we celebrate an excellent new children’s title at Teaching for Change, only to find out a couple of years later that it has gone out of print.

So, this week, while bookstores and libraries present you with lists of banned books, we present a list of recommended children’s books that have gone out of print. Some are decades old—most were published much more recently, and have had lives far too short.

Occasionally, we learn that a favorite out of print title is back in print, like Natasha Tarpley’s Destiny’s Gift, and this is cause for celebration.

Additionally, five more titles are now back in print. Candlewick Press has published a new version Heather Has Two Mommies. Skin Again by bell hooks and Jacqueline Woodson’s Visiting Day have both been reissued. There are paperback versions of Be Quiet, Marina and In the Time of Drums.

Find these favorite out of print books in your library or from your favorite used book source.

Be Boy Buzz, 9781484788400
Be Quiet, Marina, 9781595726650
Beautiful Warrior: The Legend of the Nun’s Kung Fu, 9780590374873
Butterfly Workshop, 9781933372129
Char Siu Bao Boy, 9781879965195
Cuban Kids, 9780761450771
Days of Jubilee, 9780590107648
A Father Like That, 9780060278649
From North to South, 9780892392315
Grandma Maxine Remembers, 9780761317289
Heather Has Two Mommies, 9781448745746
Homemade Love, 9780786806430
I Hate English, 9780590423045
In the Leaves, 9780805067644
In the Time of Drums, 9781620143094
Jazz Baby, 9781584302735
La Calle Es Libre / The Street is Free, 9780785707301
Los Cazadores Invisibles: Una Leyenda de Los Indios Miskitos de Nicaragua = The Invisible Hunters, 9780892391097
Mama Bear, 9780395634127
My Father’s Shop, 9781929132997
Namaste, 9781621480051
Our Gracie Aunt, 9780786814428
Skin Again, 9781484799239
Upside Down Boy, 9780892391622
Visiting Day, 9780147516084
When Owen’s Mom Breathed Fire, 9789129665482
When the Shadbush Blooms, 9781582461922

Further Reading: Children’s Book Publishing Industry