A fascinating edition of the Horn Book has just come in, which is billed as a salute to troublemakers. There are several articles on censorship and challenged or banned books*(see Betsy Hearne, Susan Patron and Pat Scales); Madelyn Travis writes about the Middle East conflict in British children's books; Marc Aronson bemoans the problems of writing non-fiction in the age of Google; Stephen Roxburgh reminisces about his time as Roald Dahl's editor; Rukhsana Khan discusses stereotyping of ethnic minorities and Lelac Almagor discusses narratives for black urban children. As if all that wasn't enough, there are shorter pieces interspersed with the main articles in which authors remember times when they were in (or caused) trouble.
* To follow up on this idea, see our own Banned Books list of controversial titles. Some of them will surprise you!
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