TARRANT COUNTY, Texas — During the Scholastic Book Fair, students at schools across the country have the opportunity to explore various book titles and purchase books.
For many, the arrival of vibrant book displays is a special time of the year.
But a change could have been coming.
On Friday, Scholastic announced that its elementary school book fairs would now separate book titles written by and about people of color and LGBTQ into a different section. However, on Wednesday, the company backtracked on that plan, saying in a statement they will "reconsider how to make our Book Fairs available to all kids" moving forward.
The bookseller’s “Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice” collection would have been an optional section, allowing schools the right to opt out of receiving diverse book titles including Andrea Davis Pinkney's "Because of you, John Lewis," Colin Kaepernick’s "I Color Myself Different," "The Secret Battle of Evan Pao" by Wendy Wan-Long Shang and “I Am Ruby Bridges" by the activist herself.
The collection featured 64 books centered on themes of racism and gender identity -- titles that have recently been the target of conservative legislators nationwide and in Texas.
PEN America, a century-old free speech advocacy group, condemned the Scholastic’s move.
Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America's Freedom to Read project, said her organization has been sounding the alarm for the last two and a half years on the dangers of the narratives involving books in schools.
“What we have seen happening over the last two years is a growing climate of censorship,” Meehan said. “We see this as another threat to a growing environment that is chilling and threatening and restricting freedom to read for children in public schools.”
Scholastic said its decision to create the separate book collection came after legislation nationwide that prohibited certain kinds of books from being in schools.
In a statement, Scholastic said that “these laws create an almost impossible dilemma: back away from these titles or risk making teachers, librarians, and volunteers vulnerable to being fired, sued, or prosecuted.”
Scholastic called its separation of dozens of titles an effort to alert educators about which titles might trigger reprisals.
The company emphasized that not all of its “diverse book titles” were put into the optional collection.
WFAA reached out to several districts across North Texas about how they plan to handle future book fairs following Scholastic’s change.
Fort Worth ISD, Dallas ISD and Plano ISD have not said whether their grade schools will opt out of the ‘diverse books’ collection.
Meanwhile, Grapevine-Colleyville ISD doesn’t use Scholastic as a vendor at all, following an unsuccessful attempt to receive a complete book list from the vendor last year. GCISD now uses Literati as a vendor.
A spokesperson for Keller ISD told WFAA that the PTA for each school campus organizes and makes decisions on book fairs, and those decisions vary campus by campus.
A spokesperson for HEB ISD told WFAA they’re looking into how the district plans to proceed.
“It is alarming that it’s [book challenges] reached Scholastic," Meegan said. "We recognize that publishers are in a precarious situation. For them to feel pressure the same way school districts are feeling pressure to restrict certain types of books from student access and pressure to threaten freedoms we all have to read is quite alarming.”