Since 2015, they have accounted for at least 40% of the list. They pointed out that, in the five years before 2015, the year same-sex marriage was legalised across the US, LGBTQ books never made up more than 20% of ALA’s top 10. In a joint statement, more than 40 free-speech groups including the National Coalition Against Censorship, Planned Parenthood and GLAAD condemned the growing pressure on libraries and schools to remove LGBTQ children’s books. The library body said that there was a 17% increase last year in the number of books targeted for removal, with 377 challenges in 2019 and 566 books targeted. JK Rowling’s books were criticised for “containing actual curses and spells”, and for including characters that use “nefarious means” to attain goals. Only two titles in the top 10 had no LGBTQ content: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, for its profanity and “vulgarity and sexual overtones”, said the ALA, and the Harry Potter series.

Susan Kuklin’s Beyond Magenta, in which teenagers talk about being transgender, was criticised by challengers for “its effect on any young people who would read it”, while Daniel Haack’s Prince & Knight, a picture book that ends with the title characters getting married, was described by those attempting to ban it as “a deliberate attempt to indoctrinate young children”.

Pence is opposed to same sex marriage, and Oliver told his viewers: “Selling more books than Pence will probably really piss him off.” Written by Last Week Tonight writer Jill Twiss and “dedicated to every bunny who has ever felt different, the bestseller about a gay rabbit was released just before Marlon Bundo’s A Day in the Life of the Vice President, a children’s book about Mike Pence’s own rabbit by his daughter Charlotte.

Other books that drew protests included the picture book And Tango Makes Three, about two male penguins adopting an egg to create a family in a zoo, and Last Week Tonight host John Oliver’s parody picture book A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, which some concerned readers felt was “designed to pollute the morals of its readers”.

George gino