This post was written in March 2021.
Certain children's books are considered contemporary. "Contemporary" means "belonging to or occurring in the present." If the book is not set in the past, then it is contemporary. It does not matter when the book was written. If the text does not place the book in the past, then it is read as a book set in the present. Understanding this definition is essential to understanding this post.
To a young child, the world just is. The child doesn't know anything different than the present world. I think of my earliest awareness of the world outside of my home, my school, and trips to the store with my parents. My first dim awareness of anything else occurred in 1980. I do have memories from before 1980, but they were just of my own life.
In 1980, I remember hearing about the 1980 presidential election. I didn't understand anything about it, really. I just knew the names, actually just one name. I liked President Carter a lot. You know why? There's only one reason. In first grade, which would have been the 1978-1979 school year, my teacher had us write letters to the White House. A couple months later, the White House sent our class a stack of brochures about President Carter. Oh, how I loved that beautiful, glossy brochure! I was so impressed by the pictures. I read all about President Carter. That formed such a strong impression on me.
I knew nothing about his politics or whether he was a good president. I just knew that I liked him because of that brochure. I didn't understand why everyone was voting for Reagan. I knew that President Carter was a man to be admired, just because of the brochure.
Children are quite impressionable. Images and presentation do matter.
Let's go back to the discussion of contemporary books. Nancy Drew is contemporary. No, she is. The books currently in print are set in the present. The Grosset and Dunlap books were written in the past, but there is nothing in them that screams of a certain era. That's because the books were revised.
If the Nancy Drew books had not been revised, they might have gone out of print a long time ago. The revisions were important to the continuing viability of the franchise. While true that the revised stories tend not to be as good, the revisions removed most everything that heavily dated the stories. In particular, the revisions removed some negative racial and ethnic stereotypes.
When children are presented with picture books by their parents, the picture books are considered contemporary. It little matters when the book was first published. It's contemporary. This is why some Dr. Seuss books are problematic.
One line in an article in The Atlantic resonates with me:
"The issue matters because the images children see and the words they hear are small but important parts of the person they eventually become."
I have a story I could tell about my early life as an infant and how something I don't even remember had a significant impact on me and formed one of my major interests.
That's why it does matter.
Now, I am completely against censorship and banning of books. However, I don't have a problem with the rights holder of Dr. Seuss pulling some books from publication. That's their prerogative. I vehemently disagree with the reaction of sites like eBay and Amazon, which have banned sales of those old Dr. Seuss books. There's nothing wrong with selling an old book, even if it has problematic content.
The idea is not to be selling potentially racist content in a new book that is seen as contemporary. The books should remain available in the secondhand market.
That was all that I wrote. I wanted to write more, but I wasn't sure where I was going with it. Now, I can't remember what I was going to write.
While I'm strongly against book bans, I do feel that we need to be careful with what we put in front of impressionable young children. Books with problematic content could reinforce racial stereotypes if parents do not teach their children what is wrong with the content of the books.
I also feel that revisions of children's books are necessary under certain circumstances. Those who want the original stories can purchase used copies. I learned not too long ago that the book Are You There God? It's Me Margaret. was finally revised in the late 1990s to remove mention of the sanitary belt.
I was so confused when I read that book in around 1980. The archaic belt thing was bizarre, and to think that it was kept in a contemporary book until the late 1990s is amazing. I'm glad it was finally revised so that girls reading it are no longer confused like at least two generations of readers were.
Revisions can be necessary, and I'm glad that approach was taken with Nancy Drew instead of removing the books from publication. With Dr. Seuss, discontinuing certain books is probably a better approach, since revising the Dr. Seuss books after so many years seems somehow wrong.
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