Draw Me a Controversy: On the Banning of Beloved Children’s Book Author Eric Carle

Spend any time scanning a list of banned books and you’ll find some head-scratchers: picture books challenged for including seemingly gay characters in the background, or describing a difficult moment in history, or revealing a naked goblin butt. Among the most banned picture books of the last school year, one title in particular seemed puzzling: Eric Carle’s Draw Me a Star.

Carle is best known for The Very Hungry Caterpillar, the first book I read to my son when he was a baby. I’m surely not alone in that; more than fifty years after its publication, it was the third-bestselling children’s book of 2023, trailing only the latest Dog Man and Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

What scandal could Carle, one of America’s most beloved picture book creators, have perpetrated in this banned board book?

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