Scholastic published a children’s book on President Trump.

It is in the Rookie Biographies collection.  That collection includes one on Obama titled Barack Obama: Groundbreaking President.  Trump’s book was called just President Donald Trump.

They also did one on Hillary Clinton.  This set covers people from Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin to Taylor Swift.

They are for kids, so they are positive to the point of being anodyne.

Well, that was too much for the Social Justice crowd.  Scholastic did published a positive book about Trump and it must be destroyed.

Scholastic Tells Children: Trump is Great

President Donald Trump is anything but neutral. The book outlines Trump’s personal and professional life with a celebratory tone. It omits facts, glosses over context, and ignores opposing perspectives.

Our concern with the text is not the accuracy of the statements and events included, but rather with the extensive omissions that undermine a truthful, nuanced, and informative account. These partial truths construct a false narrative. Scrubbing away any trace of complexity or nuance from an account about an elected official stunts the quintessential democratic freedom and responsibility of questioning and critiquing those in positions of power. We find this book to be dangerous from a democratic standpoint.

Oh no, the book is dangerous because it doesn’t contain a #Resist approved rebuttal.

“[Trump] was an unusual choice because he had no experience in politics. Some people liked him because he was an outsider who was new to working in the government. Trump ran against Hillary Clinton. She had a lot more experience in politics.”

Yes, this is all true. However, there is no reference to the substance of Trump’s campaign, to the nativist, racist rhetoric of “Make America Great Again.” Perhaps words like Islamophobia, xenophobia, and misogyny are too complicated for first and second graders, but the concepts of exclusion and unfair treatment are certainly within reach.

Notably, according to The New York Times, when Mattern wrote another children’s book on Trump for a different publisher, Running Press Kids, she was given discretion to include relevant topics and chose to write a section on Trump’s proposal for a Muslim ban. She justified her decision by saying “This is a big part of Trump’s policies and a big reason he was elected. You couldn’t leave it out.” Therefore, the omission of the Muslim ban and other derogatory and inflammatory statements in the Scholastic book is even more glaring.

The only good children’s books about Trump are the ones that blame his election on America being a racist, Islamophobic nation.

First and second graders are at an age when their perspectives about social change and citizenship begin forming. In presenting a simplified, positive narrative Mattern fails to expose young readers to critical thinking practices.

You have to brainwash them in 1st or 2nd grade to really make it stick.

Furthermore, the book not only fails to visually feature people of color or those with other marginalized identities who were attacked and denigrated by Trump during the campaign, but also effectively silences their voices by repeatedly excluding their narratives and perspectives from the text.

Any book about Trump must heavily feature anti-Trumpers.

Our children deserve access to resources that equip them to develop democratic values, to think critically, and to examine their world in a truthful way. We hope that future biographies lean away from simplified and celebratory narratives and instead embrace truth, nuance, and complexity.

You mean like the book Hillary Rodham Clinton: Some Girls Are Born to Lead.

That’s nothing but objective and factual information right there.  It doesn’t sound like “simplified and celebratory narratives.” Nope, not propaganda at all.

You know that means right?  Time to ban the Trump book.

As long as they are all books that are not critical of Trump, this is more than justified.