When Paul Carr, co-owner of The Best Bookstore in Palm Springs, discovered specific books had been deliberately turned backward—during Banned Books Week—he grabbed those titles from the shelves and created a special display.
A recent release on George Floyd, Michelle Obama’s The Light We Carry and other books that had been “spined” were moved to a more prominent place.
Maybe it had nothing to do with Banned Books Week (Oct. 1-7), he thought. “I’m hoping it’s a coincidence,” Carr said.
Now, just weeks after that anonymous “protest,” Carr and his partner and co-owner, Sarah Lacy, are engaging in a larger battle around books. They’re not fighting a petty act of bigotry this time—but a decision by one of the largest book sellers in the country.
Scholastic recently announced it will group children’s books with a focus on race, LGBTQ+ themes and other diversity-related topics during its book fairs for elementary school children into a separate category known as the “Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice” collection. The billion-dollar publisher issued a statement defending the decision to place “LGBTQIA+ titles and books that engage with the presence of racism in our country” into a segregated category—even though the decision allows schools to easily exclude them.
Carr took to social media and issued this provocation: “(Best Bookstore) will do a book fair for your school anywhere in SoCal.” He linked to an Oct. 17 NPR story regarding Scholastic’s decision—an admitted concession to the book bans sweeping across the country.
Best Bookstore’s offer includes staffing, price matches and a pledge to provide any requested book. It’s a tall order for a small, independent bookstore, but Carr is inspired—and incensed. He called the action by Scholastic “disgusting.”
“This is outrageous, and in fact, we will promote wider reading and deeper reading,” he said.
Scholastic, in its statement, claimed it had no choice, saying: “There is now enacted or pending legislation in more than 30 U.S. states prohibiting certain kinds of books from being in schools—mostly LGBTQIA+ titles and books that engage with the presence of racism in our country.” Carr pushed back, saying Scholastic is in a unique position to do the right thing.
“They are this direct supplier to schools,” he said. “So they found themselves on the front line of this, this war on reading, which is really a war against kids being allowed to be anything other than white, heterosexual, Christian … and they had a choice. They could have done what every other publisher has done and said, ‘Obviously we are not going to, in any way, engage in censorship.’”
Requests to ban books, also known as challenges, are on pace to set a record for the third straight year in 2023. According to the American Libraries Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, 1,915 unique titles were challenged from Jan. 1 to Aug. 31, a 20% increase from 2022.
Julie Warren, the library and public services manager for the city of Palm Springs, said these challenges tend to focus on already marginalized groups. “Definitely we are seeing more and more challenges to books, and they seem to be focused on people of color and members of the LGBTQ plus community,” she said.
However, there’s also been pushback against these book challenges. Nyrza Castro, branch manager at the Desert Hot Springs and Thousand Palms locations of the Riverside County Library System, said patrons at her libraries wanted to make sure they were planning to highlight Banned Books Week. “We’ve been getting a lot of calls requesting not to ban books,” Castro said.
For the week-long event, Castro’s team gathered every banned book they could find. “We put them on display and took it a step further: We added little shelf readers,” Castro said.
Those shelf readers provided detailed information about why each book was being challenged, and where each book had been challenged, as well as notes on why these books should be read.
“They’ve handed schools this permission to be bigots.”
Paul Carr, co-owner of The Best Bookstore in Palm Springs, on Scholastic
“It was very successful. We kept putting books out because they kept getting checked out,” Castro said.
Castro said the most challenged book in the country is a memoir called Gender Queer, by Maia Kobabe. “We have it here in our library,” she said.
While some states are making it easier to ban books, California is going in the opposite direction. In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a prohibition on the banning of books and educational materials in California schools. While signing Assembly Bill 1078, Newsom spoke about a “banning binge (and) cultural purge” happening across the country that is “criminalizing librarians and teachers.”
The legislation came after a protracted battle that saw the Temecula Valley Unified School District board acquiesce after initially rejecting a curriculum for elementary schools that included a supplemental text mentioning slain San Francisco political figure Harvey Milk. The board initially voted 3-2 against adopting the curriculum—with some board members making disparaging remarks about Milk. After Newsom threatened to provide the texts to students via the state, and fine the district for violating state law, the school board reversed course and approved the curriculum.
While AB1078 protects California schools to some extent, Carr sees a loophole in Scholastic’s new business strategy he thinks independent bookstores can fill.
“They’ve handed schools this permission to be bigots,” Carr said. “And my hope is that parents and librarians and, frankly, most school principals and administrators react to this by saying, ‘Well, if that’s Scholastic’s position, we’re going to find someone else to do our book fairs.’”
