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The Association for Library Service awards the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award annually to authors whose work has had a lasting impact on the world of children's literature.
The honor will now be known as the Children's Literary Heritage Award.
Laura Ingalls Wilder's books "The little house on the meadow" are a must-see for countless American childhoods. The tales are so rooted in the traditions of children's literature that it can be easy to forget or ignore that Wilder, who wrote the books in the 1930s and 1940s, portrays Native Americans as inhuman and inconsistent.
While his father, as described in the books, takes a more nuanced approach to Native Americans in some places, he also described an Indian as "no common garbage" because "it was the only French that was. ;he talked".
This is not censorship, says the group
Perhaps this worldview might be more easily dismissed if it were entirely fictitious, but the "Little House" books are semi-autobiographical and tell of Wilder's own childhood growing up in the Great Plains.
While the decision is already behind a similar backlash to any example of a name change of a school or withdrawal of a confederate monument, ALSC gave a full justification:
"Yet perceptions matter, with the very real pain associated with his works for some, and year after year ALSC gives the impression of supporting Wilder's works through a prize that bears his name."
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