Opinion: January 2025 Book Appeals 2

And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell

This is the 2nd post in a series of posts discussing Mrs. Bence’s appeals of 6 Reconsidered (aka challenged) books. The first post is here for the book Teo’s Tutu.

And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell

Current Placement: Picture Books

Librarian Recommendation: Picture Books

Mrs. Bence’s Preferred Placement: Middle Ground

Publisher’s Suggested Age Range: Ages 4-8

Karin’s Summary: This is a cute little picture book about two male penguins that live in the Central Park Zoo. With the help of a zoo keeper, they hatch an egg together, and raise the baby penguin named Tango.

Mrs: Bence (transcript):

And the next one is Tango Makes Three. The theme of this book is that there's families of all kinds. That's true. If you're a very young child trying to figure out what a family is and the difference between boys and girls and men and women could be confusing. It's a beautiful art book. It's in picture books. On the second page, the artwork depicts all kinds of families except a traditional family. There's not a traditional family. The story is beautiful in art and message, but the message is apparition in nature. Pairing up two males to have their own family to adopt this little egg and hatch it and have a child. And I don't know what the actual rate is. They have 42. This is actually based on a biologist who wrote this book from this zoo. And there's 42 penguin couples in that zoo. And one of them is, you know, the two males are raising this little baby. And this is written for children again, 2, 3 and 4. Right at the age when children are grasping the knowledge of what a family is in the role of parents, siblings, male and female, we're introducing children to a whole new dynamic which, together with other avenues of propaganda in the media, lead to a trend in gender confusion that we see now. This book is not good propaganda. It's great propaganda. In other words, it gradually introduces the audience to the concept of same sex parents cloaked in many scientific facts. The outlier being the percentage of this occurrence. This book is a must read for every song, same sex family and couple. It really is. The author makes this occurrence special and rare by his wording, but becomes sympathetic to their plight. It is not helpful to young minds below about age 10 when children have hopefully learned what Most families consist of young children do not need this confusion early in life. So this long story short, it could be, I guess in the juvenile because it's got legends when I read it way back in November, it would be okay, like for a 10 year old that understands, you know, gender roles and stuff like that. Mr. Grazie, who is a scientist at the zoo, is a human hero. A single parent who loves two children and two other men. If you look at the artwork in his office, his whole life is men. Similarly, there are no traditional couples in the book, no traditional moms or dads. Therefore, due to its lopsidedness and early introduction of average sex throughout this book would best serve in middle ground who hopefully understand concept of the outliers. You know, it's an outlier story. We're glorifying the difference when little children need to know what's normal. Just like we don't tell them about cops that kill people innocently. You know, we tell them that cops are going to help them. You know, just teaching kids the basics.

From the beginning, Mrs. Bence states “On the second page, the artwork depicts all kinds of families except a traditional family. There's not a traditional family.” This is not a true statement. The artwork on the 2nd page shows 4 human groups: a woman with a stroller, a woman and a man walking with a child, 2 women walking with a stroller and an older child walking, and in the distance 2 adults walking with a child although it's unclear the genders of the family members. The 2nd page includes the caption, “Best of all, it has its very own zoo. Every day families of all kinds go to visit the animals that live there.” On the 3rd page, the story also mentions the various “traditional” or “heterosexual” families among the different animals by stating, “There are red panda bear families, with mothers and fathers and furry red panda bear cubs. There are monkey dads and monkey moms raising noisy monkey babies.” I would post the images of the book, however I’m sure that would break some sort of copyright law.

Mrs. Bence’s other issue with this book is that she calls it an “aberration of nature.” She has a problem with the story being told to this age group because it’s an “outlier” and she believes younger children should only be exposed to what she considers to be “normal” families because she thinks they will be confused. However, she contradicts herself with her previous statement that the book doesn’t show traditional families when she mentions the other 40+ penguins at the zoo that are in “traditional” penguin relationships. Nonetheless, homosexuality may not be as much of an anomaly in the animal kingdom as Mrs. Bence thinks though. There is an entire Wikipedia page on Homosexual Behavior in Animals.

I want to push back though as well on this notion that children can’t understand homosexual families. It’s really an easy concept. When my oldest was three and I explained my best friends’ marriage to her, I simply said, “Mommy and Daddy fell in love and we got married. Auntie A and Auntie L fell in love and they got married too. Sometimes boys and girls get married but sometimes boys marry boys, and sometimes girls marry girls. The most important thing is that you marry someone you love and you are kind to each other.” This isn’t difficult to explain. My children have never batted an eye when coming across families with 2 Moms or 2 Dads.

Mrs. Bence suggests the book be moved to Middle Ground because she thinks children over the age of 10 will be more likely to see this as an “outlier story.” However, it is a true story and many families want to read that true story to their children for their own reasons, whatever that may be. Frankly, it’s none of Mrs. Bence’s business what someone else’s family reads anyway. Once again, no child under the age of 12 is allowed in the library without an adult. If someone doesn’t want their child to read this story, nobody is forcing them to. If they start reading it and realize half-way through that this book doesn’t reflect their family’s values, then they have the option to simply close the book, tell their child “…let’s find something else” and go find another book. Also, this is a picture book. Middle Ground is intended for ages 11-14. This is the age where many kids stop coming to the library as frequently. I don’t think stocking the Middle Ground shelves with “baby books” is going to make that age group excited to come hang out at the library.

As I said before though, all of this is really just Mrs. Bence’s opinion or viewpoint, which she has every right to express. However, this is not a private library. This is a public library. In order to move this book to another section in the library even according to the guidelines, the board and/or the Columbia County Library Manager would have to interpret the relationship between the two male penguins as “content of a sexual nature.” However, if they categorize the mere presence of gay penguins as “content of a sexual nature”, books containing straight penguins that raise an egg will also need to be categorized as “content of a sexual nature” and also moved. If this is categorized as sexual, what else would need to be categorized as sexual? There is really no way to move this book to the Middle Ground section without showing a bias based on one’s political or religious worldview, which in my opinion, is a violation of the First Amendment.