The L.A. Times visits a conservative publisher of children’s books. Here’s what they find:
First up is a story about a boy named Jake who watches a dire film about global warming in school. Jake walks home cursing every SUV — until his best friend, Ben, sets him straight with a didactic lecture disguised as dialogue.
The story makes its point perfectly clear; at one point, Ben tells Jake, “There is NO conclusive evidence that humans are causing the Earth to heat up.”
But Norman Book, vice president of World Ahead, had a few objections: “There’s no plot, or narrative, or anything else,” he said.
There was a murmur of assent. This one was a clunker.
Next up: a science-fiction tale about aliens who discover Earth in the future and find it in ruins. It turns out people have brought on this crisis by demonizing the wealthy, punishing energy producers and rejecting “greatness” — all in the name of combating global warming.
“It’s like Earth is the way it would be if Al Gore had his way with it,” Jackson said. But though he found the premise intriguing, he concluded the book wouldn’t fly with his target market of third- through eighth-graders.
“It feels heavy-handed for kids. Heavy-handed for everyone,” Jackson said. “I felt like I was reading Ayn Rand.”
He says that like it’s a bad thing!
(via The Plank)
