Love in the Library

 
Love in the Library
by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

art by Yas Imamura
Candlewick Press

2022

 

 

One of my coworkers is often on the lookout for new children's books and, like a lot of us, keeps an eye out for books that have been banned or challenged in some way. So it was through her that I got my hands on a copy of Love in the Library to read.

 
Love in the Library made the news not because it was banned by politicians or challenged by activists, but because the publisher tried to convince the author to change the book's content. Maggie Tokuda-Hall refused, Scholastic relented, and the book was published as she originally intended it.

 
I'm not excusing Scholastic's actions, but this is a prime example of the chilling effect that rightwing politicians and activists are hoping to cultivate. They want publishers scared to print, libraries scared to shelve, and teachers afraid to assign books that depict America's history of racism (among other topics.) What this incident shows me is that the book bans are working, they're having their intended effect, not just on the availability of these books after they're published, but on their ability to make it into print at all.
 

Love in the Library is a lightly fictionalized account of how Tokuda-Hall's grandparents met, fell in love, got married, and had their first child while they were both imprisoned in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans during WWII.

 
Tama works in the camp library, and the book is centered on her experiences. We see how she was plucked away from her old life, how harsh and degrading the conditions in the camp are, how difficult it is for Tama to retain any hope for the future. George comes to the library every day - ostensibly to return his books and check out new ones - although Tama finally realizes he can't read that fast, and that he's been coming every day to see her.

 
So the book itself functions to tell a bit of family history, and to introduce children to a shameful episode from American's relatively recent past. After the story is an author's note where Tokuda-Hall explains why she wrote the book, and where she calls out some of the more egregious examples of state-sponsored racism happening in America today, mostly to do with immigration policy. 

 
This note is clearly aimed at adults, and provides context for understanding how the book might fit in to discussions of contemporary events. It was this afterward, rather than any of the main text, that Scholastic asked Tokuda-Hall to change.