Maggie Tokuda-Hall writes books for kids and young adults. Her most recent: Love in the Library. It’s a picture book about her grandparents, who fell in love in the library of a prison camp in rural Idaho, where they’d been incarcerated because it was the 1940s and they were Japanese Americans. Love in the Library is a quiet, smart, thoughtful book, perfect for classroom use. Illustrator Yas Imamura’s watercolor and gouache art feels warm, textured and approachable. (And she’s great at drawing 1940s fashions!)

SorryWatch read Love in the Library when it first came out, because our own book addresses the United States and Canada’s history of apologies—and lack thereof—for jailing their own citizens. And also because Snarly had devoured Tokuda-Hall’s deliciously juicy, pointed-as-a-fang young-adult graphic novel Squad, illustrated by Lisa Sterle, which may become a TV show.

On April 11, Tokuda-Hall posted a dismaying story on her blog. She’d been approached by Scholastic’s educational division, which is the Grand Moff Big Cheese Literary Muckety-Muck of getting books into schools. (We all remember the joys and sorrows of the Scholastic Book Fair, do we not?) Scholastic controls 90 percent of the school and library market. Love in the Library was published by Candlewick, a picture-book publisher with far less institutional-sale muscle. Being picked up and licensed by Scholastic could mean getting the book into many more little hands, and it could mean huge sales.

Scholastic wanted the book as part of a collection in which books would be paired with teaching materials aimed at classrooms and libraries and designed to amplify the voices of Asian Americans and Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders and to educate school kids about AAPI history. 

But Scholastic wanted the book to be less…challenging. They wanted Tokuda-Hall to cut her comment, in the book’s afterword, that while her grandparents’ story was one of finding love in horrible circumstances, “improbable joy does not excuse virulent racism, nor does it minimize the pain, the trauma, and the deaths that resulted from it. But it is to situate it into the deeply American tradition of racism.”

Scholastic also wanted to cut the next paragraph:

As much as I would hope this would be a story of a distant past, it is not. It’s very much the story of America here and now. The racism that put my grandparents into Minidoka is the same hate that keeps children in cages on our border. It’s the myth of white supremacy that brought slavery to our past and allows the police to murder Black people in our present. It’s the same fear that brings Muslim bans. It’s the same contempt that creates voter suppression, medical apartheid, and food deserts. The same cruelty that carved reservations out of stolen, sovereign land, that paved the Trail of Tears. Hate is not a virus; it is an American tradition.

Publishers Weekly confirmed that the Scholastic editor had written to Tokuda-Hall, “We love this book! And we want everyone in the schools we serve to read it. However, our audience is comprised of elementary school-aged children and there are some details in the Author’s Note that, although eloquently stated, are too strongly worded for what most teachers would expect to share with their students. This could lead to teachers declining to use the book, which would be a shame. To that end we are requesting [sic] make an adjustment to the Authors Note.” (Tokuda-Hall reiterated on Twitter that she’d been told the “request” was non-negotiable.) (Snarly is trying to resist pointing out that the editor uses “comprised” wrong.) (Snarly failed.)

Tokuda-Hall blogged,

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.

I cried. For the opportunity I had, just moments ago, been so thrilled to receive, gone just as fast. For my resentment of being put in a position where I had to choose between my career and my ethics. For all the other people, just like me, who are likely given these kinds of choices all the time, but who— for fear of losing future opportunities, or for fear that this is their only opportunity, or who simply cannot turn down money—take the bargain. For the pure frustration that only years of dealing with the same kind of bullshit over and over again can inspire. For the fear that this kind of limitation will be what defines my career. I cried, and I felt ashamed that I was crying and furious that I’d been made to cry by an industry that will never cry over me.

Amen.

But hey, we’re here to analyze apologies!

Scholastic’s first apology was, to put it bluntly, terrible. As PW reported, Scholastic VP of Corporate Communications Anne Sparkman said, “We did not receive any direct response in advance of this evening’s blog post publication. We are very sorry for how this is all unfolding. We wish the conversation around Love in the Library could have continued with the author and her editors because we very much wanted the book to be available in our collection to reach as many students as possible.”

Why is this terrible? “We’re very sorry for how this is all unfolding” takes no responsibility and blames Tokuda-Hall for going public. The statement doesn’t address WHY requesting/demanding these edits was a problem. It merely holds Tokuda-Hall responsible for the bad publicity Scholastic is now getting. It implies that if the conversation “could have continued” the problem might have been resolved quietly…even though Tokuda-Hall says she was told the edits were non-negotiable. And Sparkman makes it out to be Tokuda-Hall and Candlewick’s fault that now the book won’t reach “as many students as possible.” But frankly, her statement dovetails what Scholastic said initially: Don’t use the word “racism” and don’t talk about racism as an ongoing problem, and we’ll make sure more kids see the book. (As bestselling Scholastic middle-grade author Kelly Yang notes, it’s probably no coincidence that this particular division of Scholastic is based in Florida, one of our current book-banning epicenters. Shout-out, Ron DeSantis.)

The advisors to Scholastic’s AAPI project (officially called the Rising Voices Amplifying AANHPI Narratives collection, a mouthful) spoke up as well, saying that they were “blindsided by this news” of Tokuda-Hall’s censorship. These experts (an educator from Hawaii, an author/elementary school principal from the Sacramento area and an author/high school principal from the Bay Area, and a NYT-bestselling author and physician in New York, from varying Asian American backgrounds) had been the ones to ask Scholastic to distribute Love in the Library. They were devastated. One (full disclosure: she and Snarly follow one another on Twitter but have never met) stepped down from the committee in protest. Another made this statement on behalf of the committee:

 

Scholastic blinked. And delivered an excellent apology. Here’s the vital bit, from Scholastic President and CEO Peter Warwick:

Love in the Library is a beautiful and important book, and we all agree that it would be a tremendous addition to this classroom library collection. However, in our initial outreach we suggested edits to Ms. Tokuda-Hall’s author’s note. This approach was wrong and not in keeping with Scholastic’s values. We don’t want to diminish or in any way minimize the racism that tragically persists against Asian-Americans.

We have reached out to Candlewick to apologize to Ms. Tokuda-Hall, Yas Imamura, the illustrator, and the editors. It is our sincere hope that we can start this conversation over and still be able to share this important story about Ms. Tokuda-Hall’s grandparents, who met in a WWII Incarceration camp, with the author’s note unchanged.

We also met today with the collection’s mentors (authors and educators from the AANHPI communities) to apologize for our actions in seeking to change the author’s note, to hear their most recent thoughts, and to answer their questions and concerns. It was a moving and instructive experience for us. We had not consulted them on such an important issue as this, we had therefore put at risk their trust in us and caused personal anguish and harm. We must never do this again. We will be reviewing our curating and publishing processes to ensure that all our decisions and actions are consistent with our Credo, which unequivocally states our belief in the value of every individual, as well as the importance of representation, accuracy, and diverse voices in the stories, information, and teaching materials we share with educators, families, and communities.

Please know that we will always stand against censorship. We are trusted to have a creative partnership with our authors and illustrators to ensure that all voices are heard and that children everywhere have access to authentic stories and information that helps them learn about history, grow, and discover who they are. No division will request edits to any published books for our collections moving forward, something that has been, and remains, our policy.

Why is this a very good apology? It hits all 6.5 of our steps. It uses the word “apologize” rather than “regret.” It names the offense. It takes ownership and shows understanding of the impact of the wrongdoing. It makes no excuses. It discusses the steps that will be taken to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen again. It makes an offer of repair. And the statement itself is an indication of step 6.5: Scholastic is listening.

What it fails to do is explain how this happened in the first place, despite Warwick’s claim (boast?) that not censoring licensed books has always been the company’s policy. And there’s no mention of the mentors’ request for a donation to PEN America or We Need Diverse Books. Still, it’s a big step for a big publisher. (Despite the communication exec’s statement shading Tokuda-Hall for bringing negative publicity upon Scholastic, it’s also unlikely that the about-face would have happened without the negative publicity.)

Does an apology change the past? No. Do we note that the sentence, “No division will request edits to any published books for our collections moving forward, something that has been, and remains, our policy” is weirdly self-laudatory and suss, given that this policy was obviously disregarded in at least one case (and, we must suspect, others)? Yes. But we commend Tokuda-Hall for speaking out; we commend Scholastic’s advisors and other authors for backing Tokuda-Hall and calling Scholastic to account; and we commend Scholastic for apologizing well on the second try.

We’re living in an unprecedented time of book bans. Yeah, we know everybody says “unprecedented” about everything these days. But it’s true: Book removals and challenges to schools and libraries doubled in 2022 over 2021. Doubled! Deep-pocketed conservative organizations are increasingly, quietly, aggressively backing efforts aimed at getting local libraries, schools and community boards to get rid of children’s and young-adult books that honestly address race, gender, and sexuality. But “soft censorship” by well-meaning allies, which is what happened here, is insidious too. Trying to placate people who will perpetually move the goalposts; who don’t want white children ever to feel uncomfortable about their country’s history; who don’t want trans kids to exist; who don’t want human children to know that yep, two male penguins can choose to pair up and raise a chick together; who don’t want kids ever to read about slavery or police brutality? This is an un-winning strategy. It’s why we need to support our local public libraries…and their independence.

A library brought meaning, if not freedom, to Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s grandparents; libraries can help bring freedom to the rest of us.