Perverting with Pride

Scholastic Books: Promoting Queerness for Children of All Ages

Background

Scholastic has been a trusted source for children’s books for nearly 100 years. Since the 1980s, Scholastic Book Fairs have been delivering classic series, such as The Baby-Sitters Club and The Magic School Bus, along with nonfiction titles showcasing American heroes, historical events, and natural wonders, directly to schools. Parents and children alike could shop with confidence, knowing that Scholastic materials were wholesome and age appropriate. While the dawn of the new millennium saw an increase in resources aligned with progressive environmental and social justice causes, these did not actively undermine traditional values surrounding marriage and family or sexuality and identity.

Reason for Surveillance

Not so anymore. Scholastic has now expanded its catalog to include a range of literature centered on LGBTQ+ themes. Among additions too numerous to list here is Melissa (for readers ages 8–12; previously published as George), in which “Melissa,” a gender-confused boy known to the rest of the world as George, dreams of playing the role of Charlotte in his fourth-grade play, Charlotte’s Web. Despite facing obstacles from his teacher and mother, George/Melissa conspires with his friend Kelly (the girl who was cast as Charlotte) to play the role of the spider, thus enabling him to reveal his “true self” to his family and classmates. The story ends on a “happy” note as “Melissa” finds joy and acceptance living as “her” authentic self. The award-winning author of Melissa, which has now been published in 15 languages, is Alex Gino, who identifies as genderqueer. Scholastic offers several books by Gino and others featuring queer child protagonists heroically coming to terms with aberrant sexualities and identities, often in the face of villains who see human sexuality only in the narrow context of cisgender binaries.

So as to leave no age range out, Scholastic offers picture books such as My Moms Love Me for children as young as three, and, for adolescents, a generous line of graphic novels celebrating queer identities, “feelings,” “irresistible romance,” and “the delightful ways in which love works.”

As if the metastasizing array of trans and queer literature were not enough, in 2023 Scholastic released a 12-page “Read with Pride”resource guide¹ for educators, caregivers, and advocates (there is a curious absence of the words “parents,” “moms,” and “dads”). It provides definitions of a wide spectrum of gender and sexual identities, a resource list of LGBTQ-advocacy organizations and websites, and a list of recommended books for children ages zero to young adult. Informed parents will not be surprised at Scholastic’s shift; the ideological capture of schools and libraries has long been apparent, making a trusted children’s publisher the perfect vector for further dissemination of progressive, sexual ideologies.

The guide riffs off of the Critical Theory oppressor-oppressed binary in a way that sets up framing of anyone adhering to traditional values as “others,” if not villains. A new term in the two-page glossary, allocishet is “a shorthand to describe people whose gender and sexuality are privileged by society.” That would include all non-affirming moms and dads, along with everyone else who recognizes the sexual binary and heterosexuality as the norm. Meanwhile affirming “allies”—teachers, school nurses, counselors, coaches, librarians, and administrators—are cast as accepting heroes, thus further making schools unsafe for children’s innocence.

Note

1. The Scholastic webpage for this guide is no longer active. Salvo saved a copy, and at the time this issue went to print, excerpts were also available at Massachusetts Informed Parents’s Substack.