What Courage Looks Like: Maggie Tokuda-Hall Calls Out Scholastic's Offer To License Her Picture Book "Love in the Library" But Only If Maggie Would Edit Out the Reference to Racism in the Author's Note

Maggie Tokuda-Hall, photo by Red Scott

So here's the scoop: Maggie Tokuda-Hall wrote a picture book (published in 2022 by Candlewick) telling the story of her grandparents meeting and falling in love while imprisoned in the US Internment Camps during WWII -- Love in the Library is beautifully told, and the author's note puts it in the context of America's historic and current racism.

This month, Maggie got an offer that Scholastic wanted to license her book for their educational division, but the offer was contingent on Maggie editing out the references to racism in her author's note.

Maggie said no, and even more powerfully, went public on April 11, 2023 with what happened in a blog post, Scholastic, and a Faustian Bargain.

In that piece, Maggie explained:

“They wanted to take this book and repackage it so that it was just a simple love story. Nothing more. Not anything that might offend those book banners in what they called this “politically sensitive” moment. The irony of curating a collection tentatively titled Rising Voices: Amplifying AANHPI Narratives with one hand while demanding that I strangle my own voice with the other was, to me, the perfect encapsulation of what publishing, our dubious white ally, does so often to marginalized creators. They want the credibility of our identities, want to market our biographies. They want to sell our suffering, smoothed down and made palatable to the white readers they prioritize. To assuage white guilt with stories that promise to make them better people, while never threatening them, not even with discomfort. They have no investment in our voices. Always, our voices are  the first sacrifice at the altar of marketability.”

What happened got a lot of traction on social media, and an article in Publishers Weekly, and three days after being publicly called out on their cowardice, Scholastic President and CEO Peter Warwick issued this apology.

I want to acknowledge the incredible courage it took for Maggie to say no, and to speak up. To raise her voice and say with such eloquence that this isn't okay. Read her full account of what happened, and the risk she felt speaking up, here.

This is how change happens, when people take the risk to call out injustice. 

I'm inspired, and I hope Love in the Library sells a million more copies -- with Maggie's author's note intact.

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee