Posted on 07/01/2018 10:57:57 AM PDT by Kaslin
Last week, the Association of Library Service to Children renamed the award it gives authors or illustrators whose books “have made, over a period of years, a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.” This award used to be called the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, but the association’s board decided to rename it the Children's Literature Legacy Award. Why? Because, according to board members, Wilder’s books include “anti-Native and anti-Black” references that fail to represent the association’s “core values of inclusiveness, integrity and respect.”
Wilder wrote about her childhood experiences in a 19th century pioneer family. Perhaps her most famous book, Little House on the Prairie, describes Native Americans as “wild animals” and includes characters who believed “the only good Indian was a dead Indian.”
Despite these references (and others like them), most people in America probably think removing Wilder’s name from an award for Children’s literature is silly. The majority of us have been raised in a Christian tradition (over 70% of us still claim a Christian identity), and we’ve read many of the biblical narratives. As a result, we understand an important distinction that seems lost on those who decided to rename the award:
Last week, the Association of Library Service to Children renamed the award it gives authors or illustrators whose books “have made, over a period of years, a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.” This award used to be called the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, but the association’s board decided to rename it the Children's Literature Legacy Award. Why? Because, according to board members, Wilder’s books include “anti-Native and anti-Black” references that fail to represent the association’s “core values of inclusiveness, integrity and respect.”
Wilder wrote about her childhood experiences in a 19th century pioneer family. Perhaps her most famous book, Little House on the Prairie, describes Native Americans as “wild animals” and includes characters who believed “the only good Indian was a dead Indian.”
Despite these references (and others like them), most people in America probably think removing Wilder’s name from an award for Children’s literature is silly. The majority of us have been raised in a Christian tradition (over 70% of us still claim a Christian identity), and we’ve read many of the biblical narratives. As a result, we understand an important distinction that seems lost on those who decided to rename the award:
It’s important to leave descriptions in place, even if we find them offensive. We can learn a lot about what not to do by reading the biblical descriptions (especially when we see what happened to David and Solomon), and in a similar way, we can learn a lot about what not to do by reading Wilder’s descriptions. Good writers “tell it like it is” (or “how it was”) and allow their readers to evaluate the behavior.
That’s why most of us think it’s silly to remove Wilder’s name from the award. We grew up reading her books (and then re-reading them to our children), yet we didn’t adopt the descriptions of her past as prescriptions for our future. We understood this important distinction by relying both on our rational tradition as thinking humans, and our religious tradition as American Christians.
We should have a place at FR to guess whether an article is from the Onion or a news source.
I’m sure Samuel Clemens was banned long ago.
It will be really bad for America if we allow the records of history to be erased.
Tyrants erase the past and then brainwash the current people to believe the new leaders are godlike masters who have never been matched before. They start the new history by having people worship them.
The destruction of the Library at Alexandria is an example. Then they have the right to take all freedoms away because they know best.
Guess the new history here: Lords Obama and Ocasia-Cortez and Kamala are beloved leaders who heroically defeated the white racist, homophobic KKK government that ruled for over 250 years before them. Look it up on state-permitted Google searches. It is the only history to be seen anywhere. Freedom is the freedom to vote socialist and meekly wait for your daily work assignment and food ration for each morning.
These fascists have no respect for history. They judge everything and everyone by a set of standards that contain no traditional morality and little common sense. When, O Lord, will we be rid of these halfwits?
Soon her books will be banned as “offensive”.
I see they also have a Geisel Award for illustrated books for young readers. How soon before they change the name of *that* award, because Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss) drew offensive caricatures of Japanese people when he was working for the War Department during WWII?
This is a proggresive specialty. The impeachment and assassination of some long dead person’s character for invented, imaginary crimes against the artificial social construct of political correctness.
‘ Wilder’s books include “anti-Native and anti-Black” references that fail to represent the association’s “core values of inclusiveness, integrity and respect.”
Dear Ass-holsiation of Liberal Services for Marxist children;
Mrs Wilders work has no interest in representing You!,
It is your job to be representing Mrs Wilder, STOOOPID!
Many of them have actually taken to burning books without the slightest sense of irony.
Silly?
No. It’s politically dangerous.
This is exactly how the Left seizes power...
Incremental destruction of “silly” little liberties.
Silly? No. Insidious, dangerous, and communistic? Yes.
19th Century Bowdlerizing: removing secularism and immorality.
21st Century Bowdlerizing: imposing secularism and immorality.
Its the purge. We must do the purge. Nothing is more important than the purge. We go to sleep with a smile thinking about our last purge victim and wake up in anticipation of our next purge victim. Its the purge. Purge. Purge. Purge. We must do the purge until we are pure.
-PJ
It never would succeed on earth.
The whole area of exercise of faith isn’t treated here. One could easily ask in an explicit faith context how the principles of Christian faith failed to be followed and how they were successfully followed.
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