Scholastic issued an apology to Maggie Tokuda-Hall for asking the children’s book writer to edit an author’s note that condemned racism in the U.S.
Tokuda-Hall’s Love in the Library, published by Candlewick in 2022, is the true story of her grandparents, who were Japanese Americans, meeting in a World War II–era incarceration camp. A critic for Kirkus called the book, illustrated by Yas Imamura, “an evocative and empowering tribute to human dignity and optimism.”
The book included an author’s note that mentioned “the deeply American tradition of racism,” and read in part, “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.…Hate is not a virus; it is an American tradition.”
In a blog post published Tuesday, Tokuda-Hall wrote that Scholastic wanted to license her book for its Amplifying Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders’ Stories collection, but that its offer was contingent upon her editing the author’s note to remove the references to racism.
“They wanted to take this book and repackage it so that it was just a simple love story,” she wrote. “Nothing more. Not anything that might offend those book banners in what they called this ‘politically sensitive’ moment.”
On Thursday, Scholastic’s president and CEO, Peter Warwick, issued a statement apologizing for the publisher’s demand that Tokuda-Hall edit her author’s note.
“We have reached out to Candlewick to apologize to Ms. Tokuda-Hall, Yas Imamura, the illustrator, and the editors,” Warwick wrote. “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.”
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
