Bookstores now sell only certain kinds of children’s books.
“Go into Barnes & Noble,” says Bethany Mandel in my Video of the Week, “and you will be met with a wall of biographies. You can find 27 books that are about Ruth Bader Ginsburg (ex-Supreme Court Justice). Great. Kamala Harris is a great subject. Great.”
However, where were the biographies about conservatives? There weren’t any.
There were lots of people she found on Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez and Rachel Carson. But not one about conservatives such as Margaret Thatcher or Amy Coney Barrett.
“It’s time to bring those books to the market because Lord knows the publishing industry won’t,” says Mandel.
Thus, she created Heroes of LibertyThe company will be publishing books about conservatives such as Ronald Reagan, Barrett and Thomas Sowell.
“You’re indoctrinating kids just like the left does,” I tell her.
“That’s a very fair question,” she responds. “My answer is, read the books!”
Her best-selling book is Sowell’s biography, which tells the story of a man who overcame all odds to become an economist.
When Sowell’s family moved to New York, his new teachers put him in a lower grade because they assumed that he couldn’t compete. Sowell visited the principal.
“He didn’t play the victim. He stood up for himself,” says Mandel. “He said, ‘I will prove to you that I’m capable of doing fourth grade math.’” The principal actually listened and gave him a test. When Sowell aced it, the principal told the teachers, “Take this young man to fourth grade, where he belongs!”
Sowell didn’t let racism or poverty stop him. He helped pay his family’s expenses by getting jobs, like delivering groceries.
By contrast, she says, books from today’s big publishing houses portray Black people as victims who advance only through protest. Ibram X. Kendi’s popular “Antiracist Baby” teaches kids to focus on color. “If you claim to be color-blind, you deny what’s right in front of you,” writes Kendi.
That’s “toxic,” says Mandel. “When you promote this hyperawareness of race, kids see their friend as Black, white or brown, instead of Lucy or Sally.”
Despite conservatives making up half of the population, most book publishers don’t try to reach them. “When they produce 27 books about Ruth Bader Ginsburg or ‘Antiracist Baby’ board books, those are bought in bulk by libraries,” says Mandel. Libraries are more likely to buy books than their parents. “(So book publishers) have this incentive built in to churn out progressive ideological books.”
This surprised me. It was a thought that I had about librarians. No, they’re part of today’s progressive mob. Ninety per cent of librarians’ political donations go to Democrats.
“It’s our tax dollars buying 1,000 copies of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and zero about Amy Coney Barrett,” Mandel points out.
Mandel is frustrated that “girls” children’s literature rarely focuses on motherhood. The books suggest, “You can be a NASA scientist, an entomologist, (but) girls are not taught that you can have all these career ambitions and also be a mother.” Barrett has seven kids. Mandel’s book says: “For Amy, being a mother is no less important than being a judge.”
Mandel’s books are mostly about conservatives. One of her recent books is about John Wayne.
I’m libertarian, not conservative, but I am still glad she’s producing alternatives to what today’s publishers pick.
Some other authors also are responding. The Tuttle Twins’ books feature libertarians like Frederic Bastiat. Julie Borowski’s books teach kids about the free market.
They all needed to self-publish as traditional publishers weren’t open to them.
Even illustrators turned down Mandel’s books for fear of being “canceled.”
“We have a hard time Payment people many thousands of dollars to illustrate books! We’re never going to get a book printed about Amy Coney Barrett with a Scholastic (or) Penguin Random House!”
Fortunately, a free market can’t be held back forever.
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