Protecting our youth from gay penguins

And Tango Makes Three is a children's book about two male penguins in the Central Park Zoo who adopted an orphan chick named Tango. Before you make any March of The Penguins/Brokeback jokes,you should know that this is based on a true story and it has been challenged at two libraries in Missouri(click the title above for a more complete article on this). The solution the library took was to move the book to the non-fiction section so that people wouldn't be "blindsided".

I have no probelm with putting the book in nonfiction but it sounds to me like it was placed with adult,rather than children's non-fiction and this is really meant for and written for kids. I've read this book myself(was even asked about it during the sales rep meeting with the boss)and it's not some explicit penguin porn. The artwork was what first caught my eye-Henry Cole did the illustrations and they're lovely.

Roy and Silo,the penguin parents,have more of a Felix Unger and Oscar Madison relationship-they're shown as two friends who decided to stay together and form their own family which gets even stronger when an abandoned egg is given to them by the zoo keeper and they hatch out little Tango.

And Tango Makes Three may not be what some folks want to read to their children at bedtime but it is an interesting and nicely done story about penguin family life. If people don't wish to be "blindsided",maybe they should take the time to actually read the books they get for their kids and not just grab whatever's new. A good reader is a well informed reader,whatever the age or species.