Andrew Wooldridge, the publisher of Orca Book Publishers in Victoria, British Columbia, is no stranger to book bans, having had books from his house on the front lines of censorship battles in the U.S. In the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor, in which a group of parents successfully argued before the Supreme Court that not allowing their children to opt out of classroom readings featuring books with LGBTQ+ content violated their First Amendment right to freely exercise their religion. One of the books at the heart of the case was the Orca title Pride Puppy!, a picture book by Robin Stevenson and Julie McLaughlin.

Among the nearly 600 titles recently purged from school libraries run by the U.S. Department of Defense—the vast majority containing anti-racist or pro-LGBTQ+ content—are three titles published by Orca: C.A. Tanaka’s Baby Drag Queen, Nadia L. Hohn’s The Antiracist Kitchen, and another book by Stevenson, Pride: The Celebration and the Struggle. “It is concerning,” Wooldridge says. “We publish a lot of books. We also distribute 20 other Canadian publishers in the U.S. market.”

With the U.S. accounting for a significant boost in recent years for politically and culturally progressive books—particularly in such areas as Indigenous literature, where the American market has long been deficient—bans can have a significant impact on sales. “We’ve taken a financial hit because of this,” Wooldridge says. “It’s a huge impact. Especially combined with how fragile the market is right now.”

The impact is not confined to Orca. More than half of Arsenal Pulp Press’s sales are made in the U.S. market, according to the house’s publisher, Brian Lam. Naseem Hrab, publisher of Kids Can Press, estimates that anywhere from 70% to 75% of sales come from the U.S. in any given year. “That’s pretty common for a lot of Canadian children’s publishers, because the market is so much larger there,” she says.

Above and beyond any potential sales hit, Hrab also expresses frustration at what appears to be anti-science bias in at least one case on the DoD’s list. One of the purged titles is Kids Can’s This Is Your Brain on Stereotypes, a book for kids that investigates the neurological origins of bias and bigotry. “It is incredibly heartbreaking to see a book that is all about combating and being aware of one’s own biases from a scientific perspective on a list like this,” she says. “It essentially undermines the precise purpose of the book.”

One person who is firmly in agreement that the argument about banning books to protect children is mere hypocrisy is Curtis Campbell, whose young adult novel Dragging Mason County, published by Annick Press, also appears on the DoD list. “If they cared about children, they would care about the fact that there are queer and trans children in North America who are being oppressed—who are being told that they don’t exist,” Campbell says. The broader effect of such bans, and the influence of censorious parents’ rights groups, is not limited to the suppression of books deemed unacceptable on ideological grounds. The censorship also results in a chilling effect across the business, says Orca’s Wooldridge. “The worst thing that’s happening right now is that the fear out there,” he says. “There are books of ours buyers will not touch, even if they haven’t been challenged. Because they don’t want to run the risk of having that angry mom show up at the school board meeting.”

Khodi Dill, author of Stay Up: Racism, Resistance and Reclaiming Black Freedom, also published by Annick, agrees that fear is a motivating principle in the DoD ban and other similar efforts to suppress books. He also sees the fear running in the opposite direction. The impulse to quash progressive ideas, the author believes, indicates that those in power are concerned about their own tenuous hold on positions of influence—a notion essential to Dill argues is essential to convey to students. “They are scared of your potential to change the world and change the systems that are depriving so many people of power,” he says. “That’s really what it boils down to: they are afraid. And so, to me, there’s a message of empowerment in that.”

Steven W. Beattie lives in Ontario and publishes the literary website That Shakespearean Rag.

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