Record number of complaints about LGBT+ children’s books in US

The list of most challenged books includes Alex Gino’s George, about a transgender girl, and John Oliver’s picture book about a gay rabbit, A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo

Last year, children’s books featuring LGBTQ+ characters made up a record 80 percent of the most challenged books in US libraries.

Number one on the American Library Association’s annual list of most challenged books was Alex Gino’s George which has made the top 10 since it was published in 2015.

Objections to George, which follows a child who “knows she’s not a boy”, focused on the sexual references and conflict with “traditional family structure”, with others arguing schools and libraries should not “put books in a child’s hand that require discussion”.

John Oliver’s picture book about a gay rabbit A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo also drew protests. Some readers suggested it was “designed to pollute the morals of its readers”.

Oliver’s bestseller is a parody of Marlon Bundo’s A Day in the Life of the Vice President, a children’s book that was written about Mike Pence’s own rabbit by his daughter Charlotte.

Pence is opposed to same sex marriage, and Oliver said on Last Week Tonight that he hoped: “Selling more books than Pence will probably really piss him off.”

Other books that drew protests included And Tango Makes Three, a picture book which follows two male penguins adopting an egg to create a family in a zoo, Susan Kuklin’s Beyond Magenta, in which teenagers talk about being transgender, and Daniel Haack’s Prince & Knight which ends with the title characters getting married.

The only two titles in the top 10 that had no LGBTQ+ content were Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, for its profanity and “vulgarity and sexual overtones” and the Harry Potter series for “containing actual curses and spells”, and for including characters that use “nefarious means” to attain goals.