This is the story of one of the most challenged books in America, the children’s book ‘And Tango Makes Three’. A tale of parenting and devotion, and a fable of progress and the backlash it can provoke. Read about the long march of the penguins in our Christmas issue.
Featuring Prof Marah Gubar: “It’s sort of suggesting the child has no agency to resist an “all-powerful” script. Children are exposed to a million different books and scripts, and you know, films, tv, music. Things adult says, things their peers say. Any grown-up that tries to read a picture book that they like to a child who does not like it knows that (even a toddler) they are not a totally blank slate.
We take from books what we need; we forget willfully (or unconsciously) what we don’t. We throw things aside. When I think of the encounter between the child and the book, I think it takes two to tango.”