Victoria children’s book publisher says censorship is on the rise

Missouri Republican Valentina Gomez burns educational books for teens—including one published by Orca—in 2024 campaign video. Photo: Valentina Gomez / X (Twitter)

A Victoria-based children’s book publishing house is standing by its authors amid book bans and censorship threats across Canada and the US.

Andrew Wooldridge, owner of Orca Book Publishers, told Capital Daily book bans are hardly new—one of the first books published by the company when it launched in 1984 was subject to a ban—but they’ve become more frequent in recent years.

Tomorrow kicks off Freedom to Read Week, which encourages people to speak out about intellectual freedom. Orca Book Publishers said it’s cognizant of the recent rise in frequency of people calling for the banning of books and wants its authors to know the company has their backs.

One book published by Orca, Pride Puppy! , has been at the centre of a censorship case that has reached the US Supreme Court. A group of religious parents in Maryland wants its children removed from class when books containing LGBTQ+ themes are explored.

Pride Puppy! is a children's alphabet book that follows the story of a family who lose their dog at  a Pride parade and are reunited with it thanks to the help of those attending the procession. The plot of the book focuses on spending time with family and helping others—lessons that can be found in many children’s books. Wooldridge said there’s “nothing objectionable” in the book, but detractors take issue with the appearance of Pride flags in its illustrations.

“A lot of what we're seeing right now is hate disguised as parental rights,” Wooldridge said. “It's really an attempt to make books unavailable to children at the end of the day.”

Another Orca publication was part of a disturbing book burning down south. You may have seen the viral video of an American Republican candidate from Missouri taking a blow torch to children’s books she deems “grooming books”—one of the books sitting front and centre in the video is Naked: Not Your Average Sex Encyclopedia, a modern guide to bodies and sex for teenagers, which includes information on sexual identity.

Attempted bans have also occurred in Canadian schools, though these typically happen at the school board level, rather than reaching higher courts. Wooldridge says books in Canadian schools are far more protected than in the US, especially when censorship requests are made for “less than valid reasons.”

He says most publishers are used to book bans in some form, but he worries about the effect on authors.

Much of the censorship happening in North America targets books with queer themes, with homophobic language, such as grooming accusations, often hurled toward the authors and publishers. Wooldridge said it’s especially concerning that people are “tarring authors as pornographers when they're writing books for very young children.”

“I think as authors, it's particularly difficult on them,” he said. “We felt it was important at this point to be more publicly supportive of our authors.”

Robin Stevenson, the Victoria-based author of Pride Puppy!, has been the target of multiple homophobic attacks for her work, which often touch on queer themes. She’s left public social media and, according to Wooldridge, Stevenson is no longer comfortable going to the US to promote her work.

Wooldridge said he considers this targeting of LGBTQ+ stories an attempt to keep children from accessing vital information.

“I think it speaks to a bunch of other problems in our society, like trying to stop kids having access to books where they can see themselves represented, where they can see their own stories,” he said.

It’s also not great for business. Wooldridge said there was a time when a ban could boost book sales, since people were intrigued by the controversy. But that’s no longer the case, he said, as fear and polarized politics become a driving force. This fearmongering can hang over an author throughout their career, he said.

But the censorship does nothing to sway those at Orca Book Publishers—the company completely stands by the messages of their books.

“We publish lots of books which might make some people uncomfortable, but which we feel are important books,” Wooldridge said. “Especially as we publish for kids—for them to be able to see themselves and to be able to learn about the world and become better citizens.”

But not every publisher is as surefooted, and Wooldridge worries this censorship could scare some authors and publishing companies from telling valuable stories for fear of backlash.

“That's one of the things that's most dangerous about what is going on right now as a publisher,” he said. “It's a kind of chilling censorship that happens in the shadows out of this.”

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Correction: A previous version of this story identified Robin Stevenson as being based in Quebec. Stevenson lives in Victoria, and Myriam Daguzan Bernier, author of Naked, lives in Quebec.