Our Search for Books Comes to an End.
Dear All Children's Book Publishers,
I am writing to you to express my hopes that you can soon adjust the thematic content of the literature you publish to suit the needs of our Orthodox Jewish community.
After hearing about the very sad situation in my daughter's third grade classroom, in which her teachers have not yet been able to find enough acceptable children's books to include in the curriculum, my husband and I have spent the last few weeks selecting and reading books from the local public library. Our goal was to find 10-12 kosher books of high quality and to suggest these to the school as suitable materials for next year.
We searched the Newbury Award books, the recommended Amazon reading lists and tried recollecting which books we particularly liked in elementary and junior high. We took out, in total, about 30-40 books.
Well, Children's Book Publishers, what can I say? I am sorry to report that after reading all of these, there are about only 5-6 books that we can risk recommending to the school. Frankly, it is quite likely that 3-4 of these will be rejected due to the frightening and somewhat violent themes. All of the other books violated the school rules, by mentioning Christmas, Easter or Halloween, or by including descriptions of Chinese, Native American or Greek myths, or by including a boy-girl romance as part of the plotline. As I am sure you can understand, these are topics which are highly offensive to Ultra Orthodox Jews.
Now, I am very sorry, but I simply don't understand. Why is it not possible to publish high-quality literature which doesn't include any mention of romantic, religious or violent topics?
I happen to know that there are plenty of writers who have composed novels about children named Avrumi/ Sarale/Mendy/Mushkie. These children have whole and intact family units with two parents who do not plan on divorcing any time soon. These children do not speak to others of the opposite gender and certainly would not get into romantic relationships before considering shidduchim. These children celebrate Pesach and Rosh Hashana instead of the Kwanza and Christmas narishkeite. As for plot lines? Well, of course, there are compelling and moving narratives about the exciting events of Jewish history, making friends with an elderly neighbor or even solving mysteries using Talmudic knowledge !
Please reconsider publishing books such as these and bestowing upon them literary achievement awards. I beg this of you. Otherwise my children will have nothing to read in school.
Thank you for your time.- OSM