Persecution of the Penguin Book

by Claire Kirch, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 11/21/2006

Movies about penguins might be box-office gold (March of the Penguins; Happy Feet), but controversy has been dogging a picture book about penguins, published in June 2005 by Simon & Schuster.

And Tango Makes Three, written by professor of psychiatry Justin Richardson and playwright Peter Parnell, illustrated by Henry Cole, is the story of two male penguins at the Central Park Zoo, who hatch and raise a penguin chick. The tale is based on an actual event that occurred at that zoo in 1998.

Although Tango has received a string of awards and honors, including an ASPCA Henry Bergh Book Award, and was an ALA Notable, parents in Shiloh, Ill., 20 miles east of St. Louis, recently complained to the school district that the book promotes "the homosexual lifestyle" and is easily accessible to children in the elementary school library. These parents are asking that Tango either be shelved in a restricted area or that children wanting to check out the book obtain parental permission.

So far, the school district is continuing to shelve Tango with the other books for young readers, contending that to move the book would be an act of censorship. The Associated Press quotes school superintendent Jennifer Filyaw as saying the book is "adorable" and "age appropriate."

Earlier this year, parents in a northwestern Missouri town succeeded in forcing their local library system to move Tango from the young readers section to the nonfiction shelves in two libraries: the main library in Savannah and a branch library, near St. Joseph.

Richardson, the book's coauthor, is gratified that Shiloh school superintendent Filyaw "stood behind our book, and expressed her conviction that a library's holdings should represent the diversity of the community it serves." Unfortunately, he told PW Daily, there are other, less publicized incidents of his book being suppressed elsewhere. "Many librarians came up to me at ALA and at BEA and told me they love Tango," he said, "but that they could not order it, because administrators wouldn't support their purchasing it for their collections." But, Richardson added, "Every time a parent complains, they bring Tango to the attention of thousands of other parents around the world."