A Victoria author is facing death threats after one of her children’s books, which tells the story of a puppy that gets lost in a Pride parade, became embroiled in a U.S. Supreme Court challenge.
Pride Puppy!, a 2021 alphabet book by Robin Stevenson and local illustrator Julie McLaughlin, is among a handful of books at the centre of a court case involving a group of parents in Maryland who sued their school district for the right to opt out of lessons involving books with LGBTQ characters.
Orca Books publisher Andrew Wooldridge has been telling media that Stevenson has faced death threats, which she confirmed to the Times Colonist.
In the book, a dog out with its family breaks loose and prances through colourful scenes of a Pride parade. “U for umbrellas with colours so bright … Q for a queen in a beautiful dress … K for kindness and friends that we’re keeping,” Stevenson writes.
It was among storybooks with LGBTQ representation approved in the 2022-23 school year by Montgomery County Public Schools, the largest school district in the state of Maryland.
After the district refused to allow parents to opt out their children from language-arts instruction involving the books over religious beliefs, the parents launched a court case against the school board that has wound its way to the highest court in the U.S.
Oral arguments for the case, which has attracted interest from dozens of organizations and respondents, from the Church of Latter-day Saints to the Young Conservatives of Texas and law professors at Virginia’s Regent University, is set to begin April 22.
Stevenson said it’s “surreal” that she ended up entangled in the court case, but it’s clear that books with LGBTQ characters have been increasingly under attack in the past few years, particularly south of the border.
Hate and harassment are not new for an LGBTQ author, but the messages she receives show a lot of misinformation has been spread about Pride Puppy!, Stevenson wrote in an email to the Times Colonist. “I wish people would take the time to read the books rather than believing what they read online,” Stevenson said. “It’s unfortunate, because diverse books are such a great tool for teachers — and all children, regardless of their family’s religious faith or views, and regardless of their connection to the LGBTQ+ community, attend public schools together.
“Public schools have a responsibility to make sure that they all feel seen and supported and welcome, and to create a climate where everyone is included.”
Stevenson was awarded the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence in 2023. She has written more than 35 works and had previously written a non-fiction book about Pride for older kids and teens.
She said she wanted to write a picture book stemming from her own experiences as a parent.
“It was hard to find picture books that showed families like mine and like those of many of the LGBTQ+ parents in my community, and I thought our kids deserved to see their families included on the bookshelves.”
David Boudinot, a librarian at the University of Victoria, said “denying truth and diversity” via book bans is a distraction tactic.
“History has shown us that when authoritarian regimes come into power, the first thing they do is go after the most vulnerable and we’re seeing that play out today,” he said, adding that objections made against a book often aren’t evidence-based, calling them “extreme perverse fantasies of the right wing that aren’t based in truth.”
Book challenges are a distraction from larger issues such as housing, the economy and food insecurity, he said.
It’s not just LGBTQ rights being rolled back that Stevenson, who no longer travels to the U.S., is concerned about.
In an anthology published this month called Banned Together: Our Fight for Readers’ Rights, Stevenson wrote that she was concerned about a non-fiction book she wrote for teens on abortion rights that was no longer appearing on school library shelves.
Teens deserve to have access to information about their bodies, abortion and reproductive health and rights, even if their parents might not like it, she said.
“I understand that parents may complain. I know some of the awful, hateful, even violent things they say, because they send me those emails, too. But with their rights to make choices about their bodies and their lives under attack, teens need books like this more than ever,” she said.
Among her other awards, Stevenson has won the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize, the Silver Birch Prize and a Stonewall Honor, an American award that recognizes books relating to the LGBTQ experience.
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