DS upset at library removal of books

[Scallybatch]

Went into my local library today with DS, only to be told they have removed all Tin Tin and Asterix books! He was really upset as these are his favourite books!. All the lady could tell me is that they had been told to as they upset some people. I'm baffled. Would I be unreasonable to complain?

Exactly.

Actually hurts my heart to think how a black child might feel seeing this 💔

He looks a little like the dad from the original Mary Poppins movie.

I never found the Mr Men or Little Miss books that great, personally. It was just the same idea again and again and again; just switch the stereotype for each new character. Not even a particularly imaginative idea, either: this is a character called Mr Happy and he does various predictable happy things. No real nuance to it. Wow!

I think it's telling that Roger Hargreaves' son quite cheerfully carried on churning out the series after Roger's death, without a moment's thought as to whether he happened to possess the specific necessary literary abilities that his father had, to make him suited to the task of keeping the gravy train going.

For what it's worth, I'd level pretty much the same charges at Thomas the Tank Engine too.

If you decide to buy some, try abebooks - great for secondhand books and out of print stuff.

There must be something different about the Mr Men books available in the US, I’ve just sold a lot of mr & Mrs men books and had a good few enquiries about posting the US. One mentioned the “desire to have the true originals.” Despite the hyperbole, I did not ship, they went to Bromley.

the world is not perfect books are not either
not knowing about the world at any time or place is learning

I actually have both books.

The Congo book contains pretty blatant racist stereotypes which were probably pretty common and widespread in 1931, but would be considered wholly unacceptable today. (And of course you have to remember the atrocities that were being committed by Belgium in the Congo)

Regarding the one set in the USSR I've never really understood what the problem was - or is. Yes the communist government is portrayed in an exceptionally poor light, but I'm far from convinced that Herge's narrative paints a false picture of the USSR as it was in 1930.

Tintin in the Congo has certainly been published in England as recently as 2005, and Tintin in the Land of the Soviets in 1995(?).

Both books are pretty poor compared to later Tintin adventures

I think you equally need to look up historically racist tropes. I'm not usually overly sensitive to this stuff but picked up the Asterix in Egypt comic in the library recently and was pretty shocked it was on the shelf. Anybody who doesn't see how these "caricatures" were using very well-established racist imagery is being at best naive. Are the crows in Dumbo just birds with no subtext too?

I wonder if any efforts are taken to promote the books that aren't borrowed at all; i.e. are people seeing them and deciding that they don't interest them, or are they just not seeing them at all in the first place?

There is no group of people more passionate about books and helping readers discover them than librarians. Tasks like crafting displays to draw attention to books people otherwise might not consider and making suggestions to patrons of all ages are favorite parts of the job for every librarian I've ever met.

What about the other Tintins, or Asterix and Obelix comics though? They do tend to take the piss out of everyone. I must admit they really got my son into reading. Maybe one or two could be a little beyond.

He had no interest in reading until we found them as my brother brought him one when he came to visit via Belgium. We’d do captain Haddock in slurred words. And Snowy when he lapped up all the spilt whiskey. The opera singer in Tin Tin, Cacofonix in Asterix would be wailed and warbled. They were definitely in the US as we joined a library in DC during a short stay, and borrowed some that we hadn’t been able to get before in Ireland.

I guess they might be different, but it's not like the originals are banned here.

Regarding the one set in the USSR I've never really understood what the problem was - or is. Yes the communist government is portrayed in an exceptionally poor light, but I'm far from convinced that Herge's narrative paints a false picture of the USSR as it was in 1930.

I wonder who has complained about it - Putin maybe.

Looks quite a lot like this guy

When I worked in a library (90's) all the books about sex were hidden behind the counter along with a kids book about living with AIDS, obviously no one ever came up to enquire if we had under the counter books.

(I was tempted to sneak one out on to the shelves to encourage pearl clutching 😆).

Anyway OP - write/email to the big boss rather than the local library and ask why the decision was made and if they could reconsider, even if the library have to put them under the counter.

That is clearly John Bull, a personification of the English created by the English themselves.

Mr Happy going down a hidden staircase and finding a mirror universe containing Mr Miserable was more entertaining than it needed to be. “Being John Malkovich” for preschoolers. Mr Tickle and Mr Bounce both had their moments too.

I do agree with the various Mr Scared/Mr Anxious/Mr Worried/Mr Nervous/Mr Apprehensive/Mr Fearful/Mr Frightened/Mr Afraid/Mr Panicky/Mr Agitated/Mr Disquietment clones though. There are only so many extremely similar emotions you can write children’s books about, and the Hargreaves empire scraped the bottom of that particular barrel some time ago.

Lost about the Dumbo reference @BrotherViolence
Don't agree with any censorship . It's a slippery slope to riots because someone drew a cartoon depicting Mohammed ( yes I know cultural, blah,blah).

I agree with you that Mr Men has some uncomfortable comments about fat people, and it was my first thought when wondering why Mr Men might be problematic.

I can't think of specific examples off the top of my head either but I remember the feeling and I read them to my child quite recently!

I have all the Noddy books and find most of them less problematic tbh.

Need to go and find some examples now!

My mum forbade Enid Blyton across the board.
I used to read them in secret.

Forbidding books can make them more alluring.

I just took a look online at Tintin {was never into Tintin} and Tintin in the Congo just looks absurd -Tintin on a palanquin bourne by Congolese, and 'Snowy/Milou' being pompous.

1930's, a World away from now.

The Mr Men books are popular in the US. I imagine the reason that Americans used to have to buy them in the UK is because they weren't, at that time, available for sale in the US (they were only launched there at the end of the 90s).

Similarly, Tin Tin has never been as popular in the US as he is in Europe, so that's probably why they were far easier to buy in the UK.

Just because a product isn't readily available worldwide does not mean it has been banned.

And yet it's the right wing that's most prolific in banning books and, particularly, burning them.

Their book censorship is off the scale though. They have lists of the most frequently challenged books.

The Christian fundamentalist Mary Whitehouse was just one person here, they have entire groups made of Mary Whitehouses. Wackos had court cases in the 1980s where a record was played (one case concerned Ozzy Osbourne) as it had a "hidden message". As recent as 2021, Moms for "liberty", a censorship group in the white settler entity who want to maintain whitewashing of books (so no mention of Natives being dehumanised as "savages" in the white settler 'declaration', or the slave owning tyrants from the elite planter class who "founded" this white settler entity (jefferson, washington etc.). This censorship extends to any mention of gays, race, discrimination.

"Banned in Boston", a moniker for Boston which derived the Puritans, the most persecuting cult in the history of western civilisation, is another example of how religious fundamentalism seeks to control the thoughts and beliefs of people.

Yup, I'm aware, but as you say, books are generally banned is the US for offending American-Christian sensibilities, not because the are insufficiently "woke".

What a pile of nonsense, books have been banned or censored since basically their advent.

Even just using Tin Tin as a case study, English publishers refused to publish Tin Tin in America (first published in Belgium in 1931) for decades specifically because it was racist. It was only eventually published in the UK in 1991.

There's also, to my mind, a world of difference between deciding something is not appropriate for children and "wiping it out". Do you get upset when movies are age-rated?

They're £3/4 on eBay op if you wanted some