I'm going to ramble a bit, but it will hopefully come around to something. When I was growing up, I read a lot of older historical book series, a big one would be the Little House On The Prairie series. While I really enjoyed it, there are some very obviously negative portrayals of Native Americans and African Americans. I remember being angry about it as a kid, and my Dad telling me, that part of learning about history is that we have to acknowledge the people we were, and still are. But because Little House on the Prairie is only semi-autobiographical, I still have mixed feelings about this. I do think they are well written books by a female author, an interesting perspective on early American life, and as an adult I can see and acknowledge the issues with the text. If we try to get rid of every author with racist ideas there wouldn't be much left to read from the 20th Century, and it also feels like being dishonest about who we are. So, I'm very mixed, how do you all feel about it? Do you think children can handle books with racial issues like this if it's explained to them? What is our responsibility here?
