Love in the Library by Maggie Tokuda-Hall is a picture book, published by Candlewick in January 2022, that tells the story of how the author’s Japanese-American grandparents met while incarcerated at an internment camp during World War II. The book ends with an author’s note by Tokuda-Hall and includes a passage that reads, “[My grandparents’] improbable joy does not excuse virulent racism, nor does it minimize the pain, the trauma, and the deaths that resulted from it. But it is to situate it into the deeply American tradition of racism.”
Scholastic expressed interest in licensing the book for a specific library collection but requested that she cut the passage about racism from her note. She asked if Scholastic’s offer was contingent upon this edit being accepted and was told it was. She decided to blog about what happened, which led to an apology from Scholastic. Learn more.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
