Last month, Texas State Rep. Matt Krause sent a list of 850 books to local school districts. The GOP lawmaker, who’s running for Texas Attorney General, wants school librarians to identity which of the titles they carry. In an attached letter, Krause explains that he fears the books cause students to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex.”
Four books written by acclaimed children’s author and illustrator Jerry Craft are on Krause’s list. According to the Houston Chronicle, they depict the life of “Jordan Banks, a seventh grader navigating being one of the only students of color at a predominantly white private school.”
One of Craft’s books, New Kid, was also temporarily pulled from circulation in the Katy Independent School District after a Texas parent complained that it espoused Critical Race Theory. The book won the 2020 Newberry Medal, one of the most prestigious prizes in children’s literature.
A petition objecting to the move garnered 2,000 signatures and asserted, “Those who object to Mr. Craft either don’t understand what they are reading or are superimposing CRT as an issue. It is not.”
Administrators commenced a 10-day review. The book was ultimately re-instated.
At a recent virtual event held by the Harris County Public Library, Craft said “I don’t think that the people that banned it actually read the book.”
He added that the controversy has resulted in a sales boon. “What has happened is so many places have sold so many copies because now people want to see what all the hubbub is. They get it and they write to me and they’re almost disappointed because there’s no big thing that they were looking for,” he explained.
Craft added that he was inspired to write the Jordan Banks series because there weren’t enough children’s books the depicted Black life.
“If I saw any other African American characters in books, they were probably not living their best lives,” he said. “Most of the books I saw really were about struggle… being enslaved, gangs, the civil rights struggle. I never really saw myself… I wanted to [write] African American characters that sometimes the hardest [decision] during the day is ‘do you want chocolate ice cream, or strawberry?'”
