Scholastic to Sell 'Luv Ya Bunches' at Middle School Book Fairs
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By Rocco Staino and Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 10/30/2009
Scholastic has reversed its decision to censor Lauren Myracle’s controversial Luv Ya Bunches (Abrams/Amulet, 2009) from school book fairs and will make a slightly sanitized version of the title available at middle schools in spring 2010. The novel, however, still won’t be for sale at elementary fairs—even though it specifically targets that age group.
Scholastic announced the news on its corporate blog Tuesday, but failed to explain why the book was blocked in the first place. The company did, however, say that it was “committed to a review process that considers all books equally regardless of their inclusion of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) characters and same-sex parents.”
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| Lauren Myracle (left) with her fans during a recent book signing for 'Luv Ya Bunches' |
Parenting blogs, as well as those in the gay and lesbian blogosphere, were up in arms following SLJ’s report last week that Scholastic told Myracle it wouldn’t carry Luv Ya Bunches at its fairs after she refused to alter her plotline by replacing a homosexual couple with a heterosexual couple. And the controversy quickly gained national attention, even prompting Conan O’Brien to poke fun at it during his opening monologue on Tuesday night’s ‘Tonight Show.’
Myracle did make changes to the book’s language, explaining she was comfortable with the trade-off of toning down some language in exchange for making the book accessible to more readers.
As a result, Scholastic’s book club division said it would carry the cleaned-up version for sale in its catalog, but the book fair division refused, citing the lesbian parents of one of the main characters, Milla, as the reason.
Kids who purchase Scholastic book club's excusive paperback edition, for example, will read Quin saying, “Geez, Milla, you carry around so much junk,” while those who buy the original hardback novel in bookstores will read her saying, “Geez, Milla, you carry around so much crap.” The changes were requested before publication of the hardcover edition on October 1 so that book clubs would have enough time to publish their own exclusive paperback.
Books available for sale at middle school fairs in spring 2010 are the sanitized version.
While Scholastic says its about-face on the issue was strictly an internal decision, Change.org, a blog network that promotes social change and advocacy, is taking the credit. The organization reports that its members delivered more than 4,000 online petitions urging the company to change its mind about excluding the book from its popular fairs simply because it features two moms raising a child. The petition was launched by Michael Jones, communications director for the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School.
Robin Beck, organizing director of Change.org, says he, along with a representative from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), had numerous e-mail exchanges with Scholastic spokeswoman Kyle Good this week about how to resolve the issue. Beck believes the company’s new stance on the issue would not have come about if “we didn’t call them out on this.”
In the end, Beck says Change.org is pleased with the results, but there’s still a lot of concern that this “small gesture” isn’t enough.
“There are certainly people within the community who feel that Scholastic has not yet admitted any sort of mistake or apologize,” says Beck, adding that the issue is still very much alive. The ultimate goal, he explains, is to sell Luv Ya Bunches at elementary fairs and to have Scholastic apologize to the author. Good says there are no plans at the moment to review whether the book will be sold at elementary fairs.
Deborah Caldwell-Stone, acting director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, points out that Scholastic is free to market books as it likes because booksellers aren’t government agencies and therefore aren’t held to the same standards as public libraries and school libraries, which serve entire communities. At the same time, Caldwell-Stone says, asking Myracle to alter her book, does have a chilling effect.
“It discourages other authors from writing similar books that include same-sex parents or diverse characters, so it’s problematic,” says Caldwell-Stone.
