Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell stopped by MSNBC’s Velshi to talk about their children’s book, And Tango Makes Three, as part of host Ali Velshi’s Banned Book Club.
And Tango Makes Three, illustrated by Henry Cole and published in 2005 by Simon & Schuster, tells the story of two male penguins who raise a chick together. The book has been the target of would-be censors, frequently making the American Library Association’s annual list of banned or challenged books and taking the No. 1 spot in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2010.
Velshi noted that Richardson and Parnell have sued the Florida board of education over a school district’s banning of their book under the state’s controversial Parental Rights in Education law, popularly known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
“We were so disturbed by the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law and the bias behind it, and we were thinking, How could somebody challenge this law?” Richardson said. “When we heard that our book was pulled in Escambia County, we sat up and said, Oh, we have standing. We can challenge this law.”
Parnell discussed the origin of the book, which was based on the true story of two male penguins in the Central Park Zoo.
“We wrote the book, at the time that we did, [because] there were very few books out there that reflected…two-mom or two-dad families or single-parent families, in which children could see themselves reflected that way,” he said.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
