Jenan Matari had just begun promoting her debut children\u2019s book this summer when the cancellations began. First, Chevalier\u2019s Books in Los Angeles called off her event after what Matari described as pressure from local community members. The employee who had booked the event refused to cancel it, and the bookstore fired her. Two days later, another employee quit in solidarity.<\/p>\n
Then came New Jersey. Watchung Booksellers, a community bookstore in Montclair, was set to host her next reading but abruptly canceled, explaining in an emailed statement it was \u201cto ensure the safety of our staff and customers\u201d.<\/p>\n
The reason for such upheaval? Everything Grows in Jiddo\u2019s Garden, a picture book about a young Palestinian girl learning about her heritage through her grandfather\u2019s gardening, rooted in his own father\u2019s traditions from Palestine<\/a>.<\/p>\n Everything Grows in Jiddo\u2019s Garden. Illustration: Courtesy of Jenan Matari<\/p>\n Three thousand miles away and a couple of months earlier, Safa Suleiman was flying to Seattle for her very first school visit for her publishing debut, Hilwa\u2019s Gifts. Her phone rang mid-flight: the Arabic and Hindi language school had canceled her visit because of a 2024 blogpost<\/a> on her website where she had shared details about her family members being killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.<\/p>\n \u201cI never saw myself in children\u2019s books growing up, and I was about to share my book with children who may never have seen themselves in children\u2019s books either,\u201d Suleiman said.<\/p>\n These experiences are part of a wave of censorship that has swept across the United States since 7 October 2023, interviews with nine children\u2019s authors reveal. Event cancellations, book bans, and coordinated harassment campaigns have proliferated through schools, libraries, and bookstores, targeting authors who have either written about Palestinian life and culture, have supported Palestinian rights, or been caught in the backlash simply for their visibly Muslim identity.<\/p>\n For the Palestinian American authors among them, the pattern reminds them of an uncomfortable and peculiar reality: that their very existence is threatening, and sharing idyllic stories that define their childhood \u2013 however innocent \u2013 can trigger organized campaigns accusing them of seeding antisemitism and hatred.<\/p>\n Safa Suleiman. Photograph: Courtesy of Safa Suleiman<\/p>\n According to 2024 research<\/a> by author and educator Nora Lester Murad, there have been 114 English-language children\u2019s books explicitly centering Palestinian narratives exist for K-12 readers. There has been an uptick in recent years \u2013 44% of Palestinian children\u2019s books since 1998 were published between 2019 and 2023. Yet much of this increase comes from self-publishing, with 32% of recent titles self-published as traditional publishers remain reluctant gatekeepers.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s this effort to reject the people,\u201d Matari said. \u201cNow that we\u2019ve broken through this industry and there\u2019s more books coming out, it\u2019s like \u2026 we can\u2019t stop people from reading your story. So we can stop people from getting to know you, or connecting the authors with the stories that they write.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFreedom of speech isn\u2019t afforded to everybody in this country, especially if you\u2019re Palestinian,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n The first full week of October is Banned Books Week in the US and is a time meant to highlight censored voices. Yet pro-Palestinian authors are finding themselves at the center of a new form of literary censorship, though the books being challenged don\u2019t advocate political positions or promote hatred. They tell simple stories of gardens and olive trees, of children navigating identity and language, of family traditions preserved across generations, leading authors to come to the conclusion that it\u2019s their existence that appears to be the provocation.<\/p>\n \u201cIn addition to disconnecting us from our land and from our people,\u201d Matari said, \u201cnow they\u2019re trying to disconnect us from our stories.\u201d<\/p>\n A page from Suleiman\u2019s Hilwa\u2019s Gifts. Photograph: Text copyright \u00a9 2025 by Safa Suleiman. Illustrations copyright \u00a9 2025 by Anait Semirdzhyan.<\/p>\n What started with angry emails and last-minute cancellations is also becoming encoded in state policy. On 7 October, California governor Gavin Newsom signed a pair of bills into law<\/a> designed to combat hate and antisemitism in schools. One new law establishes an office of civil rights and an antisemitism prevention coordinator, and requires districts to investigate and take corrective action when \u201cdiscriminatory content is used in classrooms or professional development\u201d.<\/p>\n The concern swirling in the world of children authors is that the vague language could be used to label their books and their stories as discriminatory, giving state officials legal cover to further suppress Palestinian narratives from schools, and perhaps see these restrictions expand in other states and professional settings.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, Hannah Moushabeck received a call about an upcoming speaking engagement at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where she had been invited to discuss her book Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine and the censorship attempts against it. University administrators told her that her book violated North Carolina\u2019s compelled speech and neutrality law<\/a> because it \u201cdoesn\u2019t show two sides to the story\u201d. Moushabeck could attend the event, administrators told her, but she was prohibited from reading from her book.<\/p>\n Hannah Moushabeck discussing her book. Photograph: Courtesy of Hannah Moushabeck<\/p>\n But it\u2019s hardly the first experience with censorship this author had to endure. Moushabeck said she\u2019s had five visits cancelled since 2023 and the threats became physical at her nephew\u2019s elementary school in Amherst, Massachusetts, last year. \u201cI had to arrive at the school at six o\u2019clock in the morning and go in through the back with a security escort,\u201d Moushabeck said. A Jewish friend accompanied her for additional protection while school security and police remained on standby. \u201cI remember having to do my school visit and keep a smile on my face and keep incredibly calm, because I really didn\u2019t want my nephew to see that we were at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n At Germantown Friends, a Quaker school in Philadelphia, Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow was scheduled for an all-day visit to launch her book Sister Friend \u2013 a story about friendship between a Black girl and a Muslim classmate who wears a hijab. A couple days before the October 2023 event, administrators announced a postponement.<\/p>\n Inside Moushabeck book\u2019s Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine. Photograph: Supplied<\/p>\n \u201cThey felt that in the time that we were in, it was a protective measure,\u201d Thompkins-Bigelow recalled. What followed was months of rescheduling without firm dates, culminating in contract termination in February 2024 after around 150 Jewish parents<\/a> demanded the school remain \u201ca safe space for Jewish students\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt like the microscope was on me as soon as they recognized that, oh, this is a Muslim author and she said something about Palestine,\u201d Thompkins-Bigelow, who wears a hijab, said. \u201cYou have to prove that you\u2019re innocent of being an antisemite if you have any kind of pro-Palestinian commentary. Even just saying, \u2018Here\u2019s a link to donate to Palestinian kids\u2019 \u2013 that becomes political.\u201d<\/p>\n Autumn Allen. Photograph: Jannah Graves<\/p>\n Autumn Allen faced similar targeting last year when two of her planned school visits were canceled, one in the Sharon city school district in Pennsylvania just days before the event.<\/p>\n Allen, who writes young adult novels and picture books, was scheduled to discuss her work when parents began flooding the administration with complaints after seeing promotional materials. But the content of her writing wasn\u2019t the issue. Instead, complaints sent to school administrators cited her social media posts about Palestinian rights.<\/p>\n The Sharon district and another school in Brookline where she was an alumna buckled under pressure from what Allen described as \u201ca handful of very loud\u201d voices creating \u201cthis urgency and this feeling of horror\u201d about her visit.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s never about the content of the talk. It\u2019s always about who I am as a person,\u201d Allen said. \u201cAnd at the end of the day the parents were saying they were going to show up at protests and [the administrator] said they didn\u2019t want to make a scene in front of the kids.\u201d<\/p>\n Aya Khalil. Photograph: Dr Kasumi Yamazaki<\/p>\n Egyptian American author Aya Khalil said her book The Arabic Quilt was removed<\/a> from Pennsylvania\u2019s Central York district not because anyone objected to its story but because \u201cdiverse\u201d books were the target. \u201cThey didn\u2019t even read the book. They\u2019re just like, OK, we\u2019re gonna remove these books from the shelf.\u201d<\/p>\n Afterwards, she started to notice how her own bookings dropped dramatically after being outspoken about the censorship surrounding Palestine and Palestinian authors, illustrators, creatives and educators.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of them haven\u2019t been getting invited to schools or they have been getting their author visits canceled,\u201d Khalil said. \u201cI used to get maybe 10 to 15 libraries per year.\u201d Now she rarely fields requests.<\/p>\n Ironically, the attempted suppression has sometimes backfired. Matari\u2019s book sold out its first printing of 5,000 copies before it reached store shelves, and Khalil estimates 10,000 copies of her books were purchased in the York school district, largely due to community support mobilized in response to the cancellations and bans.<\/p>\n The Great Banned-Books Bake Sale. Photograph: Courtesy of Aya Khalil<\/p>\n For Khalil, the experience led her to write a new book, The Great Banned-Books Bake Sale, about a girl who organizes a bake sale to buy back banned books, eventually leading to a reversal of the ban.<\/p>\n At least one author has been able to rebuff attempts to cancel her events. Maysa Odeh, whose debut book A Map for Falasteen, about a little girl named Falasteen learning about her roots, faced removal attempts in Watertown, Massachusetts, in an organized campaign by a group called End Jew Hatred<\/a>. Watertown officials were flooded with thousands of complaint emails following the call to action to cut it from the second-grade summer reading list, but the library stood their ground.<\/p>\n Maysa Odeh. Photograph: Courtesy of Maysa Odeh<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t really get into the mind of the person who read my book and felt threatened by it,\u201d Odeh said.<\/p>\n At the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference last November, Odeh and other authors required security after being targeted by the pro-Israel media organization Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera<\/a>), which has been long accused of smear and intimidation tactics<\/a>. The group, which also runs an education institute<\/a>, attends teaching conferences, and has continued to document and monitor<\/a> pro-Palestine voices.<\/p>\n \u201cI kind of went into it blind and when I realized they were there, I reached out to my publisher, and NCTE offered a security guard,\u201d Odeh said about Camera\u2019s presence at NCTE. \u201cThey\u2019re like, we can\u2019t get rid of them \u2026 a security guard was there at my panel on building empathy through picture books.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOnce I was on these conservative social media channels, the onslaught was unrelenting,\u201d Moushabeck said. Camera has written \u201cfive separate articles\u201d about her, \u201cand when you Google me, some of the first articles that come up\u201d are from them. \u201cI noticed that when people were criticizing my book, they were pulling direct quotes from those articles.\u201d<\/p>\n Maysa Odeh\u2019s A Map for Falasteen. Photograph: Maysa Odeh<\/p>\n And for new authors such as Jenan Matari, the cancellations are about more than book talks and school visits \u2013 they are about who gets to tell their own stories. The pressure campaigns, the threats, the social media monitoring and the overarching bans have only reinforced what she already knew: that some voices are still seen as too dangerous to be heard.<\/p>\n \u201cThey couldn\u2019t stop people from reading about Palestine,\u201d she said. \u201cSo now they\u2019re trying to stop people from meeting the authors who write about it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jenan Matari had just begun promoting her debut children\u2019s book this summer when the cancellations began. 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