WHO SPEAKS FOR THE TREES?
More than three years into a nationwide surge in book challenges and political attacks on the freedom to read, book-banning efforts continued their drift toward absurdity last week in Virginia, where the Floyd County Public Schools suspended a One Division, One Book community reading of Katherine Applegate’s Wishtree following complaints that the middle grade novel depicts a monoecious red oak, a tree with reproductive parts that can pollinate and flower simultaneously. In the book, published in 2017, the tree claims an identity that is both female and male and responds to diverse pronouns: “Call me she. Call me he. Anything will work.”
According to local reports, after the school’s reading program kicked off on March 4 a parent whose children attend a private Christian academy in neighboring Carroll County took to Facebook to challenge Wishtree’s account of the oak’s nonbinary identity, calling the book “indoctrination at its finest”—despite the information at issue being included in most standard middle school science curricula. A week later, an email to families from unspecified FCPS administrators noted that, “after careful consideration,” the One Division, One Book reading event would be suspended. Reached by phone, school board vice-chairperson Laura Leroy directed PW to contact FCPS for more information, but the school system did not respond to phone messages or email requests for comment. For her part, Applegate expressed disappointment that the reading event and Wishtree were dismissed with “no explanations,” but acknowledged “the fear school boards face” when book challenges put them on the defensive. Applegate said that advocates “have to keep making noise again and again,” adding that she may “stop by and say hi” at FCPS’s next school board meeting, which is set for April 8. —NodB
Austin, Tex.–based Literati Book Fairs is in growth mode. In a March 21 announcement, the company said it will soon offer book fairs to some pre-K–8 elementary schools in Delaware; Maryland; New Jersey; Pennsylvania; Virginia; Washington, D.C.; and West Virginia, beginning in the 2024–2025 school year. Since buying and rebranding Follett Book Fairs in January 2022, Literati has experienced rapid growth and now reaches more than five million students across 29 states from four distribution centers, making progress on its goal to become a serious competitor to Scholastic in the school book club market. The move into the mid-Atlantic states will significantly expand the company’s footprint. Initially, Literati Book fairs were available primarily in the Midwest and South.