My old middle and elementary schools hosted Scholastic Book Fairs every year. I would usually have a difficult time choosing between the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid or something about dinosaurs, but students today can choose from titles about changing their gender or going to a drag show. This is as ridiculous as it sounds, and while conservatives have started to push back against sexual material in public schools, the fight needs to continue.

Scholastic recently released its “Read with Pride” resource guide for 2024 to help teachers navigate the “undeniable, joyous boom of queer literature for children” and promote gender ideology in ways beyond reading.

The guide suggested that all teachers “absolutely know queer children and interact with them” in their classrooms. “By engaging with queer literature for children and young adults, you are disrupting the status quo that implies being cisgender, heterosexual, and allosexual are the default,” according to the guide.

It also contained a glossary for terms “widely accepted amongst LGBTQIA+ people.” Some of their made-up words with provided definitions include “allocishet,” “panromantic,” “demiboy/demigirl,” and “two-spirit.”

The publisher provided a list of book recommendations for all age groups, starting with children under eight years old. Some of the recommended books include My Moms Love Me, Drag Teen, Gay Club!, and Welcome to St. Hell: My Trans Teen Misadventure. 

Finally, the resource guide promoted Scholastic’s “Power of the Story” initiative that “aims to highlight books featuring characters and stories from groups whose identities and lived experiences have been suppressed and excluded from mainstream narratives.”

This is not a new direction for the decisively woke publisher, who recently faced controversy for sanitizing some of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books to be more inclusive without telling the author. Just last year, Scholastic was forced to back down from its practice of having a dedicated section about gender and racial politics at their school book fairs.

Scholastic also signed a letter with numerous other publishing companies that argued “books must not be removed from shelves just because they are challenged” in response to the removal of sexually graphic books from schools in some states.

Reasonable content moderation in public school libraries has been slandered by the left-wing media as book-banning, but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis brilliantly called them out on this lie last year. DeSantis gave a presentation showing some of the materials that had been removed from Florida schools, and local media outlets were forced to cut their feeds because they could not air “sexually explicit content,” admitting that the books were perverse.

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It should not be controversial to have moderation guidelines in public school libraries, but many on the Left actually believe that elementary-aged children need to be exposed to borderline pornographic content. Scholastic promoting this ideology is unacceptable, and conservatives should resist Scholastic Book Fairs from being hosted at schools in their area.

In a time where conservatives are having a difficult time learning to pick their battles, protecting children from gender ideology is an easy win.