For ten years, award-winning author Shannon Hale has been writing a series called “The Princess in Black.”
"The first nine [books] deal with Princess Magnolia, who wears a fluffy pink dress and glass slippers, and when the monster alarm goes off, she puts on a mask and a cape and she fights the monsters,” Hale said. “For nine books, we had no issue with that is essentially a book about gender expression. … I can do both, is what the story is saying.”
The most recent book in the series, “The Princess in Black and the Prince in Pink,” features the titular Prince in Pink, who wears knight armor and also puts on his pink mask and cape to help decorate royal balls.
“And again, it’s the same message,” Hale said. “I'm a boy, I can put on knight armor and I can battle monsters. I'm a boy, I can put on pink and tassels and glitter and decorate for a party. I can do both. Guess which one of those books got the controversy?”
Hale spoke at an event put on by the Let Utah Read coalition on Saturday, where attendees wrote to their legislators asking them to oppose book bans.
Book bans on the rise
The term “book bans” is often used as a catch-all to describe two separate concepts: book challenges and book bans. A book challenge refers to an attempt to remove or restrict materials based on content, and could lead to passages being marked out, the book being moved to a different section or students’ access to the book being limited. Book bans are when a previously available book is removed from a library, school shelves or curriculum entirely based on content.
Both book challenges and bans have increased since the passage of H.B. 374 last year, which prohibits what lawmakers deem “sensitive materials” in public schools. Proponents of the bill say it’s meant to keep pornographic and inappropriate material out of students' hands, but opponents say it only limits access to books with diverse and marginalized perspectives.
“It's a book, it’s a fictional character, his feelings are not hurt,” Hale said. “But there are very real people in the world ... who see the adults yelling about this character should not exist, and it feels very real to them to say, ‘That means I shouldn't exist.’”
Which books are censored, and how
But which books are actually getting banned from libraries and schools? According to the American Library Association’s list of the top 100 most banned and challenged books from 2010 to 2019, the top reason for removal was sexual content, references or discussion. Other common topics were vulgarity, violence, LGBTQ+ content and discussion or portrayal of race and racism.
None of Shannon Hale’s books are currently on the main list of banned books, but she says that's not the only way books get censored.
“When a book is challenged, it gets put on these official lists and can be pulled from libraries,” Hale said. “But what happens more often is soft censorship, where teachers and librarians who are understandably afraid for their jobs or even lives are not putting books on bookshelves or removing them quietly.”
According to Paisley Rekdal, co-chair of PEN America's Utah Chapter, a nonprofit focused on censorship in books and education, 19 bills about book bans are slated to be discussed next legislative session.
“Some of them actually involve criminalizing the work of teachers and librarians so that if, in fact, they are caught displaying, purchasing or teaching works that have been considered objectionable or banned, then they can be fined, possibly even given some jail time,” Rekdal said.
Lack of support for book bans
Though the number of book bans and challenges have increased in the last year, some surveys suggest general support for book bans hasn’t.
“The American Family Survey that was put out by Deseret News and BYU showed that only 16% of Americans think that we should pull a book off the shelf if a parent objects,” said Peter Bromberg, associate director of EveryLibrary, which works to build voter support for libraries. “And only 12% thought there's anything on the shelves to begin with that’s a problem.”
He joined Rekdal, Hale and community members at Under the Umbrella, a queer bookstore in Salt Lake City, to write to their legislators to oppose book bans as well as share the positive effects that librarians, educators and books have all had on people’s lives.
“The vast majority of us have had really great experiences with libraries and with our educators,” Rekdal said. “We want to remind our legislators that in fact, we support their work, the kinds of training they've been given to make really good choices, educated choices about what books they want to teach, what books they want to put in classrooms.”
Bromberg says the majority of book challenges also come from a very small group of people.
“The Washington Post analyzed thousands of book challenges and found that 11 people were responsible for the majority of them,” Bromberg said. “In Granite School District here in Utah: 205 challenges, 199 of them were [by] one married couple.”
Focusing on positivity and support
Despite the heavy topics, the event itself was casual and friendly, with both children and adults in attendance, and letter prompts focused just as much on the positive effects of books as they did on an opposition to book banning.
That energy of positivity and support was echoed by Shannon Hale herself, who encouraged everyone not to act on fear the way she feels those banning books have.
“What I'm trying to do personally in my life is just always lead from love. Gosh, I love. I love those princes in pink,” Hale said, tearing up. “I love those kids. I love those teens. What can I do? From this feeling of love and compassion, what action comes out of that? And I think that's how we change the world, is leading from the love and compassion.”
