Almost eighty years ago, Margaret Scoggin, a librarian at the New York Public Library, made an odd choice. As one of the founders of the NYPL children’s branch in the early 1940s, Scoggin had been contributing a column to Library Journal called “Books for Older Boys and Girls.” In 1944, she inexplicably decided that her articles should instead be published under the title “Books for Young Adults.”
This decision catapulted the group of children for whom she was recommending books into an age bracket to which they did not actually belong. It is to Miss Scoggin, therefore, who first coined the term “young adult,” that we owe the existence of this illogical category used only by librarians and publishers to promote books for readers aged twelve and up who are actually still children.
The American Library Association arbitrarily defines a “young adult” as a library patron between the ages of twelve and eighteen. This category does not only apply to public library patrons but also includes middle and high school students who use their school libraries. Legally, however, adulthood is not attained until a person turns eighteen, so the youngest adult cannot possibly be younger than eighteen years old. The age at which an individual becomes an adult also called the “age of majority,” is set at eighteen years in forty-seven states (in Alabama, Nebraska, and Mississippi, you have to be even older).
Medically, adulthood is similarly defined. The American Medical Association and the National Institutes of Health only consider those who are eighteen and older to be adults; 13 to 17-year-olds are categorized as “adolescents.” Considering these standards, “young adult” emerges as an illogical term. “Pre-adults,” odd as it sounds, would make more sense, being similar to the term “preteen,” which is used, according to Merriam-Webster, to designate a child younger than thirteen. (The trendy word “tween” is also frequently used in libraries to specify children between young childhood and adolescence, generally ages 8-12.)
So, what explains this push by librarians and publishers to erroneously refer to children as adults? Is it merely an innocuous marketing technique, or is the motivation behind it more insidious? Some more library history may help to answer this question. Where Scoggin got the notion to suddenly refer to older children as young adults is unclear, but in speculating about her reasons for suggesting this change, a look at the influences upon her, including her educational background might shed some light on this mystery.
In the 1940s, Scoggin attended Columbia University’s School of Library Service, the first “library school” established in the United States. Two decades earlier, Columbia University had become the epicenter of Communist intellectual activity in the United States led by Frankfurt School intellectuals who relocated there from Germany. It is well documented that Columbia University’s Teachers College and other departments at this institution of “higher education” were strongly influenced by Communist ideology at this time, so it is likely that the library school was similarly affected.
In the past year, the political infiltration of the American Library Association has become quite obvious as self-proclaimed Marxist Emily Drabinski has taken over the leadership of the organization. Considering the origins of training programs for librarians, however, the roots of ALA’s ideological takeover may likely be traced back to the time of Margaret Scoggin.
Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Chris Rufo recently appeared on Fox’s Jesse Watters Primetime. In the beginning of the segment, “Dirty Books Are Being Used to Advance the Marxist Dream,” a clip was shown of Deborah Caldwell-Stone, Director of ALA’s “Office for Intellectual Freedom,” admitting to a “sustained messaging” program to “reframe” and “promote” inappropriate books on sexual themes as “diverse materials …that are about inclusion and fairness.” When asked why the ALA is pushing this agenda, Rufo explained, “The goal of Marxist political leaders since the beginning was always to abolish the nuclear family,” an institution which they consider one of the “impediments to the revolution,” and to have kids reject “notions of ‘heteropatriarchy’” to “advance the revolution” and “to dissolve the moral notions of children and their families.”
One of the goals of Marxism, as Rufo suggests, is to eliminate parental authority so that children become mere wards of the state. The sooner children are not under the control of their parents, the sooner they will be more easily controlled by the government. Indeed, Karl Marx called for the abolition of the family in The Communist Manifesto because he believed that children were being exploited by their parents. Considering its current agenda, the values of the American Library Association appear to align with Marx, and its organizational structure supports its agenda.
Just as there is a separate section in most public libraries designated as “young adult,” the American Library Association has a distinct branch called the Young Adults Library Services Association (YALSA). It should be no big surprise that Margaret Scoggin, thanks to her efforts to promote “young adult” literature, was appointed the first president of YALSA’s precursor, the Young Adult Services Division, which was founded in 1957. This organization was rebranded as YALSA in 1992 and continues its mission of influencing the publishing industry and libraries nationwide in accordance with its Marxist ideology.
YALSA’s recent award-winning books clearly reflect its woke agenda. Jason Reynolds is YALSA’s recipient of the 2023 Margaret A. Edwards Award, established in 1988, which “honors an author, as well as a specific body of his or her work, for significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature.” What was one of Reynolds’s “significant and lasting” contributions to YA literature?—a book he co-authored in 2020 with CRT-guru Ibram X. Kendi titled Stamped: Racism, Anti-racism, and You.
Meanwhile, the YALSA Printz Award is given to “a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature.” This year’s prize went to All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir, a novel based on a victim/oppressor worldview, which Kirkus Reviews praises for confronting “head-on the complicated realities of life in a world that is not designed for the oppressed to thrive in.” In Scout’s Honor, by Lily Anderson, one of the four honorable mention books in this category, “the cast displays an effervescent mix of racial and ethnic identities” (also from Kirkus Reviews), which certainly checks off the box for any ALA-award winning book requiring that its theme relates to racial or gender ideology.
In the latter category are the three other “honorable mention” books for the 2023 Printz Award. These include Icebreaker, featuring a gay romance between two hockey players, When the Angels Left the Old Country, in which, according to Kirkus Reviews, “Queerness and gender fluidity thread through both the human and supernatural characters,” and Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality, a book that “offers nature-based analogs for many types of human sexual orientation and gender identity” according to a BookPage review.
With all of the YALSA Printz-ward-winning books being geared towards racial and sexual themes, there is an obvious overemphasis on woke ideology in material recommended for readers aged 12-18 (ALA’s arbitrary definition of “young adult”).
As part of the obvious agenda of libraries towards getting woke literature into the hands of older children, ALA supports all efforts to allow this age group to access these books without parental knowledge. The ALA believes that children should be allowed to read books like Gender Queer and Lawn Boy without any parental consent, even if such books are shelved in the adult section of the library. Article VII of the ALA’s “Library Bill of Rights,” which was not added until 2019, eighty years after the original “Bill of Rights” was written, states that all people, no matter how old, “possess a right to privacy and confidentiality in their library use.”
This initially sounds like a good thing until you realize that it undermines those parental rights that should supersede it. ALA also “opposes all attempts to restrict access to library services, materials, and facilities based on the age of library users.” Most current state laws maintain the confidentiality of library records for all ages so that parents are not permitted to know what books their children are reading. The ALA is just fine with this situation and opposes all efforts to amend state law so that parents would be allowed to access their children’s library records.
Considering how strongly the ALA promotes woke literature to children, baffled parents are left wondering why. The answer is simple: the American Library Association is just following the Marxist dictate to undermine the authority of parents. That’s why libraries, predominantly managed by adherents to the ALA agenda, can’t just let kids be kids. To weaken the family, kids must become adults (or “young adults”) as soon as possible!
The cancer that had its roots decades ago has metastasized, and the only cure lies with parents and concerned citizens who vehemently reject the indoctrination supported by the American Library Association. They must support all efforts to have their towns and states cut financial ties with ALA, elect conservative library trustees who will reject ALA’s toxic agenda, and demand that their state representatives support legislation allowing parents to have access to their children’s library records.