BooksIN MAY, JEN PETRO-ROY
had a trip booked to Texas
for a campus visit. As is
standard practice for big
titles, Macmillan Children’s
Publishing Group (MCPG),
publisher of her debut
novel, P.S. I Miss You, set
up stops at middle schools
around the U.S. for her to
talk with students. But for
this specific event, the
school abruptly canceled.
“The administrator decided
that by teaching this
book, [I’d] be promoting an
LGBTQ ‘agenda,’ ” Petro-
Roy, 37, says. So she didn’t
go to Texas after all.This wasn’t new for her.
In liberal and conservative
towns alike, schools and
libraries have declined
visits from Petro-Roy (who
identifies as straight).
P.S. I Miss You follows an
11-year-old girl who begins
questioning her faith
and sexuality. It contains
no profanity or sexual
content. Yet it’s met
resistance for over a year.
EW spoke to multiple
authors, publishers, and
booksellers and found that
Petro-Roy is far from
alone. In spite of progres-
sive advances in children’sliterature, LGBTQ voices
are being censored.
K.A. Holt, who identifies
as LGBTQ, wrote an essay
for Publishers Weekly in
April describing her
encounters with “soft
censorship”: schools giv-
ing excuses—scheduling
conflicts, students’ study
time—to keep her from
appearing as planned.
“There was no other [rea-
son given] than the fact
that [kids] had to study,”
she tells EW of one recent
cancellation. “I would
really not have known why
it [happened] if a studentLGBTQ BOOKS AND AUTHORS ARE MEETING RESISTANCE IN MIDDLE SCHOOLS—
AT PRECISELY THE TIME YOUNG READERS NEED THEM MOST. BY DAVID CANFIELD
T weenDramaArt © 2017 by Iacopo Bruno; burst used under license from Shutterstock.com ILLUSTRATION BY FRANCESCO CICCOLELLA
AN ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
ALL-TIME
G RE ATE S T
NOVEL
THE JOURNEY NORTH BEGINS
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