We need more titles to counter the single narrative in picture books: Police help everyone. Police catch bad guys. Police keep everyone safe.
My one-year-old daughter is really into trucks right now. One of her favorite books of the moment is I Love Trucks by Philemon Sturges. Every time I read it to her, she points to the trucks pictured in the back and makes me name them. She starts with the one labeled “police truck,” with the description, “A police truck often carries rescue equipment, such as inflatable boats and a giant airbag.”
I contrasted that with the police trucks I saw today on my Twitter feed, in the downtown streets of my city—Oakland, California—all weekend, through the massive protests that followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Did they contain inflatable boats? I watched video after video, unable to look away, as police shot canisters of tear gas, flashbang grenades, and rubber bullets into crowds of people seven blocks from the building where I usually work, the Main Library of the Oakland Public Library (OPL).
The Main Library is where, in 2017, after the murder of Philando Castile, a group of OPL staff wrote and published Evaluating Children’s Books about Police: a toolkit for librarians and other evaluators of children’s literature. As I wrote in a May 2018 SLJ article, the toolkit asks some questions about the books that exist for young children about police, most of which are either picture books (fiction) or “community helper” nonfiction books meant to teach children about the work of police officers. Those questions include:
Does this book acknowledge the feelings of fear and anxiety children may have on seeing police?
Does this book acknowledge that some people have negative experiences with police officers?
Does the text of this book assert that police only stop people justifiably, without the influence of racial bias?
We did not include a list of “recommended” books for kids about police, books that acknowledged the police oppression experienced by communities of color and depicted police in a way that would feel realistic to a child who had lived experience of police brutality. We stated in the toolkit is that we wanted those who read it to evaluate books on their own and make their own decisions.
But here's the bigger reason: there weren’t any. Every book we looked at described police as helpers, heroes, someone to trust and call on for help.
I Love Trucks was published in 1999, eight years after video emerged of police beating Rodney King and the subsequent civil unrest. The author, illustrator, editors and art directors involved would have been very much aware of this documented instance of police brutality and the heavy police response that followed.
The text about police in this book—that police trucks “carr[y] rescue equipment, such as inflatable boats and a giant airbag”—aligns with a trend I noticed in other children’s books about police published in 1992 and after. I reviewed 23 picture books about police for the toolkit, acquired through my library system and statewide interlibrary loan. All of them said that police help people, but some tried to further explain police work and got stuck. One book said that police officers have computers in their cars and sometimes ride in helicopters, and that was about it.
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What’s changed since we published the toolkit in 2017? Very little. Jessica Walker, library aide at OPL, reviewed children’s books released since 2017 and found about half a dozen more that describe police as helpers, heroes, and friends. Despite the evidence to the contrary, we keep telling kids the lie: Police help everyone. Police catch bad guys. Police keep everyone safe.
Librarians, as a demographic, are overwhelmingly white, and when we continue to purchase these books and have them in our collections, we perpetuate the lie. Presenting police as community helpers without a counterpoint available—that police might harm them—is gaslighting for children who see police brutality in their home, in their neighborhood, on TV, and on their parents’ phones.
Of even more concern is the continuous production of picture books with police as friendly characters, including many TV tie-in titles (LEGO, Peppa Pig, Paw Patrol, etc.) and books like I’m Afraid Your Teddy Is In Trouble Today, which I reviewed in the context of our toolkit on Reading While White in 2018. In Teddy, the reader arrives home to find the house trashed and police officers on the front steps, preparing to arrest a naughty teddy bear. It’s all very tongue-in- cheek, and of course Teddy gets released with a warning. As I said in my review, this is no joke for a child who’s come home to find a parent arrested. Who are books like this for? Who’s not going to be in on the “joke?” (Frighteningly, a cursory search on YouTube reveals Teddy as a favorite book for police officer story times.)
There is one book I’ve recommended many times, published shortly after our toolkit was released. Momma, Did You Hear The News? (above) by Sanya Whitaker Gragg depicts an African American family talking about staying safe with police after a police killing. There’s also Something Happened in Our Town: A Child's Story About Racial Injustice, released in 2018, which does an admirable job showing two families’ reactions to a police killing. These two books are important for library collections. Not My Idea: a Book About Whiteness by Anastasia Higgenbotham (currently available to download for free from Dottir Press) is an excellent example of effective writing for very young children on this scary topic, even though the focus is on a White child’s experience. There are several worthy picture books that deal with incarcerated parents, such as Missing Daddy by Mariame Kaba. Incarceration follows arrest, though, and the trauma of a parental arrest doesn’t have a similar presence in children’s literature.
What’s still missing are nonfiction books that acknowledge the reality of police violence against communities of color. Books that say:
Police should help people, but sometimes they do not. Police carry weapons and sometimes they hurt people. When that happens, many people get very, very angry. They protest to show how angry they are. You might feel angry at the police, too. It is okay to feel angry. I am very angry.
Amy Martin is the community relations librarian at Oakland Public Library. All views expressed are Martin's own and not necessarily those of her employer.
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Powerful, important analysis. Thanks very much.
I firmly believe that educators should not indoctrinate children. If children need to learn that there are bad people out in the world (ex. bad cops, bad teachers, bad priests who molest kids etc. then it should be parents to teach children about that). Our jobs as Librarians are to provide information out there that for the most part is in the best interest of all for the better good of society. What purpose would it serve to incite fear or hate of police officers? I have noticed many Black men get roughed up even killed by police but I do not believe it is always as a result of the police officer being racist. Perhaps the officer is in fear for his life and he has a wife and kids to go home to. All persons should be taught to respect authority and not resist arrest so that they do not risk getting killed. Yes, some instances is a matter of race but not always. Over using the race card is not good because it is not always the situation. Why do men resist arrest? Is it their upbringing? Is it that they fear the police are going to harm them? Is it arrogance and defiance of authority? The same rule does not apply to every person or every situation. Just because a few police are bad does not mean they all are and by promoting an image of bad police officers and inciting hate toward them puts their lives in danger and makes their jobs more difficult. The bottom line is mothers. Parents should teach their children to respect authority and mothers should teach their children not to be racist. This way when persons are getting arrested they don't risk their life by punching the police officer or resisting arrest because in a split second when it comes down to it the police officer may shoot you if he thinks his life may end in a scuffle. As outsiders it is easy to say that the police officer should not shoot and in certain instances he should not. We should not have vigilante trigger happy police officers and there should be strong consequences like jail time and fined for officers who behave in such a manner but to assume that all police officers who hurt or kill the person they are arresting do so out of racism is not a good thing because it is not always so. If you tell a man whether he be black, white or brown to stop and he has an arrest warrant for a violent crime and he keeps walking to his vehicle after you say stop and you shoot him I say the officer was trying to protect himself. What if the person is walking to the vehicle to withdraw a gun or a knife? If the police officer attempts to tackle him what if he takes the gun from the police officer and shoots him with his own gun? Police officers want to get home to their families. My father is an ex sheriffs deputy and he had a wife and 7 kids to come home to so he exercised extreme caution. The bottom line is crime doesn't pay. There are intentional and unintentional consequences for crime. Maybe the police officer is racist and is looking for an excuse to shoot you if you resist arrest. Maybe the police officer is not racist but genuinely fears for his life when you are resisting arrest. Don't chance it. Just don't do the crime and if you do the crime then don't resist arrest and just do what you are told when approached by police officers. Going to jail is better than being dead. Do not resist arrest. As a Librarian I would not put on the shelves books portraying police officers as bad. I do not put Sesame Street books on the shelf since I found out they had a man in woman's clothes on the show. I have nothing against lgbt however toddlers watch that show and I believe a tv show containing that subject matter would be appropriate for children ages 8 or 10 and up i do not think it is appropriate for toddlers who may get confused. It is not even appropriate for parents who are eager to involve themselves in lgbt example my daughter when she was 5 years old used to tell me "When I grow up I want to be a boy." I didn't go running to buy her boys clothes and tell her she is member of lgbt now she is 16 and all girl. I don't believe libraries or tv shows should indoctrinate children. It should be up to parents to teach children about certain things like there's bad police officers out there or there is an lgbt community. Parents know their children's maturity and know what age their child is mentally mature to learn about these things. Just like there are bad police there are bad teachers and bad priests etc. etc.
I love this article. This is such an important dialogue to have. How do we reflect real life issues in children's books to support them in making sense of the world we live in. Creating some kind of utopian ideal, where everything is perfect and rainbows and lovely, is doing our children a major disservice. Those children whose lives do not fit into the perfect pink platitudes presented in so many children's books, are left feeling isolated, confused and that there is something wrong with them that their lives are so different. All writers could choose to rise to the challenge. Thank you Amy for your commitment to making a difference.
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