Dear Scholastic VP Responsible for the Book Fair:
It is Saturday night. I was supposed to spend this evening watching trash TV, eating a take-out frozen custard sundae, and relaxing.
Instead, that frozen custard is churning in my stomach, and I'm trying to decide how badly my 3.5 year old son will feel when I tell him that we have to return his new "Bakugan" and "Life-Size Dinosaurs" books, because they came from a company that doesn't want people to know that families like his exist.
I'm talking, of course, about your outrageous effort to tell author Lauren Myracle to change her new book "Luv Ya Bunches" so that one of the characters no longer had lesbian moms.
You see, I am a lesbian mom, and also the co-chair of my school's Scholastic Book Fair.
I feel positively sick that I have spent time and energy supporting a company that doesn't want authors to expose children to my family, or to deal with the irritation of occasional homophobic individuals complaining that their children might learn that 2 mom (or 2 dad) families exist.
I hope I can find new copies of the books I bought my son somewhere else tomorrow, so that I can return the ones we bought at the Book Fair when it re-opens on Monday.
And I am making a list of independent bookstores to contact about helping us with next year's Book Fair.
I understand, you are still willing to list "Luv Ya Bunches" in the Scholastic Book Club catalog, just not the book fair.
It isn't the same thing, and it isn't good enough. With book fair books, children, parents, and teachers pick up the books and look at them. Almost no one leaves with no books.
In fact, because so many of the kids are drawn to books including TV or cartoon characters, even as their parents are drawn to classics or beautifully illustrated stories, many families make multiple purchases from the book fairs. Teachers list these books on their wish lists, and parents donate them to classrooms. In other words, Book Fair books get much more exposure than catalog books.
And my family deserves to have the kind of casual, ordinary exposure that "Luv Ya Bunches" provides.
This is an original Deep South Moms Blog post, (http://www.deepsouthmoms.com). Liza can regularly be found blogging about life in a 2 mom, 2 kid family at LizaWasHere, or about legal issues related to privacy & data security or social media at Privacy Counsel.
(c) 2009, Liza.
As written for Deep South Moms, http://www.deepsouthmoms.com.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
TO SUBSCRIBE TO MOMS
Items in the MOMS package are not included in your MCT News Service subscription. You can subscribe to the MOMS package or purchase the items a la carte on MCT Direct at www.mctdirect.com. To subscribe, please call Rick DeChantal at Tribune Media Services at (800) 245-6536 or rdechantal@tribune.com. Outside the United States, call Tribune Media Services International at +1-213-237-7987 or e-mail tmsi@tribune.com
It is Saturday night. I was supposed to spend this evening watching trash TV, eating a take-out frozen custard sundae, and relaxing.
Instead, that frozen custard is churning in my stomach, and I'm trying to decide how badly my 3.5 year old son will feel when I tell him that we have to return his new "Bakugan" and "Life-Size Dinosaurs" books, because they came from a company that doesn't want people to know that families like his exist.
I'm talking, of course, about your outrageous effort to tell author Lauren Myracle to change her new book "Luv Ya Bunches" so that one of the characters no longer had lesbian moms.
You see, I am a lesbian mom, and also the co-chair of my school's Scholastic Book Fair.
I feel positively sick that I have spent time and energy supporting a company that doesn't want authors to expose children to my family, or to deal with the irritation of occasional homophobic individuals complaining that their children might learn that 2 mom (or 2 dad) families exist.
I hope I can find new copies of the books I bought my son somewhere else tomorrow, so that I can return the ones we bought at the Book Fair when it re-opens on Monday.
And I am making a list of independent bookstores to contact about helping us with next year's Book Fair.
I understand, you are still willing to list "Luv Ya Bunches" in the Scholastic Book Club catalog, just not the book fair.
It isn't the same thing, and it isn't good enough. With book fair books, children, parents, and teachers pick up the books and look at them. Almost no one leaves with no books.
In fact, because so many of the kids are drawn to books including TV or cartoon characters, even as their parents are drawn to classics or beautifully illustrated stories, many families make multiple purchases from the book fairs. Teachers list these books on their wish lists, and parents donate them to classrooms. In other words, Book Fair books get much more exposure than catalog books.
And my family deserves to have the kind of casual, ordinary exposure that "Luv Ya Bunches" provides.
This is an original Deep South Moms Blog post, (http://www.deepsouthmoms.com). Liza can regularly be found blogging about life in a 2 mom, 2 kid family at LizaWasHere, or about legal issues related to privacy & data security or social media at Privacy Counsel.
(c) 2009, Liza.
As written for Deep South Moms, http://www.deepsouthmoms.com.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
TO SUBSCRIBE TO MOMS
Items in the MOMS package are not included in your MCT News Service subscription. You can subscribe to the MOMS package or purchase the items a la carte on MCT Direct at www.mctdirect.com. To subscribe, please call Rick DeChantal at Tribune Media Services at (800) 245-6536 or rdechantal@tribune.com. Outside the United States, call Tribune Media Services International at +1-213-237-7987 or e-mail tmsi@tribune.com
Digg
Twitter
Facebook
StumbleUpon
![Iowa football player hit by truck while on motorcycle [WARNING: GRAPHIC]](http://snsimages.tribune.com/media/thumbnails/htmlstory/2010-09/55928266-02034609-187105.jpg)
