Banning controversial books is a coward’s act. Publishing controversial books can require great gobs of bravery.
There was a time, before Ursula Nordstrom, when children’s books did not discuss race, homosexuality, puberty, divorce or any of the themes that are currently falling afoul of a handful of unimaginative and fearful right-wingers. Before Nordstrom, children’s literature had a tendency toward the moralizing, the saccharine, the didactic — stories that she once described as “neat little items about a little girl in old Newburyport during the War of 1812.” (This Nordstrom quote, and most others in this piece, come from “Dear Genius,” a wonderful book of Nordstrom’s letters collected and edited by Leonard S. Marcus.) Shifting the landscape of children’s literature from bad books for good children to “good books for bad children” required monumental effort, self-interrogation and courage. Nordstrom made it look easy.
