Author/illustrator of 'Grandads Pride' chosen as artist for the Summer Reading Challenge

[RolledDahl]

Anyone here work in a Library?
For those of you who don't, you may know that every summer we promote the Summer Reading Challenge from the Reading Agency. It's a lovely way to encourage children to keep reading over the summer holidays.

This year the Reading Agency have chosen Harry Woodgate as the illustrator - he is the author of the controversial book Grandad's Pride, which included images of fetish wear...many of you may remember the concerns over some of his illustrations.

I shouldn't be surprised, knowing how captured the literary (& library) arena is in general, but it does seem to be a very deliberate decision.
And I'm not entirely convinced that his use of baby blue and pink as predominant background colours in the posters was completely accidental 😒

No, I couldn’t tell. Your response read very much like you are desperate to ignore the large red flags and defend this man working in children’s publishing.

Trouble is, we’ve seen countless times what happens when we ignore warning signs relating to men and children. It never is to the benefit of children. It’s sad you can’t see that.

@CornishDaughteroftheDawn I think @Imnobody4 ’won’t’ see it rather than ‘can’t see the red flags.

It is not like we haven’t been here before. Accepting Saville for being a quirky fundraiser for good causes yet clearly creepy. Stephen Ireland at Surrey Pride.

We may well be now on permanent high alert for red flags but that is a good thing. Batting away subliminal messages as innocent has not stood the test of time well in terms of children and safeguarding. Our boundaries are being pushed and the recent bill proposed by the government regarding criminalising parents who won’t affirm gender identity is another thing being pushed. TRAs are pushing our boundaries constantly all dressed up as ‘be kind’.

That’s very true.

I think I was trying to give that poster the benefit of the doubt, but on reflection, as a society, we know full well the risks and consequences of ignoring these red flags and it ends in abuse of children or women.

So I think I was wrong to excuse that poster defending the man with red flags by assuming that they ‘can’t’ see the problem.

The refusal to acknowledge the problem has the potential for more sinister motivations.

You are right, my apologies @MagpiePi

In our authority we have changed the question to "what is your sex?" with the options being Male, Female or Prefer not to say.

For me it meant redoing a whole spreadsheet to accommodate the change as removing one column messed up all my Exel calculations!

I had to smile at the person earlier speculating that a child might "look up the illustrator" of the challenge characters. Can safely say that no child has done that in the entire history of the Summer Reading Challenge!

And did what?

I just saw it in another library so it must be the council pushing it

I misread your post on my phone initially - thought you'd said that 'Grandad's Pride' was a BOOK that the Reading Agency were advocating as part of the summer challenge thing. (I know they don't pick books so I was confused. Must learn to read properly!)

But honestly, if it's just the illustrator - may or may not have been a choice pushed by an agenda, we almost certainly will never know. But - WE don't cancel people because of other work they've done that we find 'problematic', do we? That's what the nutjobs do. He's a perfectly acceptable illustrator of children's books in terms of artistic talent, aesthetics, etc. He's produced the cover art and poster art for this year's challenge. I see no issue. (Unless I see nipple tassels but I don't think I do.) I think the pale blue and pink are just ... a sunset - no intervening white lines and symmetrical pink/blue either side. Sometimes, a sunset is just sunset.

(I looked this chap up and stumbled over his Insta and yes, he is all they/them, keeping Lucy and Yak going singlehandedly, did an Oxford Story Museum 'Adult Late' (making pride flags and talking about being queer ...) - but, so what, I suppose. For the purposes of the Reading Challenge, he's a children's illustrator. I REALLY have issues with Grandad's Pride, as several others here do (for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with books aimed at young children normalising the fact that some of them have a gay family member - nothing wrong with that). But Grandad's Pride doesn't seem to have anything to do with this particular job, and I have to say that I don't think he's a distinctive enough illustrator that some small child is going to see the poster art for this and immediately think 'oh, it's that Grandad's Pride author! This must be about being queer then'. I try not to be disingenuous but I'm buggered if I'm damning a writer or artist for other work they've done, if this is an isolated piece of work we're assessing.

Why promote him? Isn’t this poster commission ‘inclusive’, transactivist, cool librarians giving him a pat on the back?

What about the other illustrators who might have been chosen? Was not choosing one of them the equivalent of cancelling them?