LeVar Burton lauds banned books on ‘Daily Show’: ‘That’s where the good stuff is’

LeVar Burton, former host of the children’s television series “Reading Rainbow,” urged kids to delve into books that some parents and school officials have tried to ban from shelves across the country instead of avoiding them.

During an appearance on “The Daily Show” with Trevor Noah, Burton weighed in on the “culture war” over books that discuss topics some adults find inappropriate for children, including books on race, gender, sexuality, mental health, history and more.

Some books pulled from school libraries, according to “The Daily Show” segment, include:

• “And Tango Makes Three,” a book about two male penguins raising a chick together
• “Separate Is Never Equal,” about the desegregation of California schools
• “The Bluest Eye,” a Toni Morrison novel about racism and white beauty standards that includes mentions of sexual abuse

Burton appeared in a skit, “Reading in 2022 with LeVar Burton,” in which he attempted to share books with his audience but found out along the way that all of them were banned. Video of the segment shared on YouTube Feb. 16 has been viewed more than 20,000 times.

He starts off by trying to share the Caldecott Award-winning book “Rosa” by Nikki Giovanni, about civil rights icon Rosa Parks, only to be cut off over a “content violation.”

“As it turns out, that book is banned because reading about segregation is divisive,” Burton says on the show. “Since almost any book about Black people these days is considered divisive, here’s one that doesn’t have any people in it.”

Burton attempts to move onto “And Tango Makes Three,” only to be cut off again.

“I’m told that book is also banned because of ‘sexual perversion,’ which is weird because there’s no sex in the book at all,” Burton said. “Y’all, they adopted the baby.”

Burton tried to move onto the Dr. Seuss book “Hop on Pop” before discovering that it was flagged for being “disrespectful to parents.” Finally, he gives up and says that children should just go ahead and read the banned books anyway.

“Read the books they don’t want you to,” Burton said. “That’s where the good stuff is. Read banned books!”

Movement to ban books

Burton’s message on the comedy show comes shortly after one Tennessee school district banned the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel “Maus,” written by Jewish cartoonist Art Spiegelman and recounting his father’s experiences as a survivor of the Holocaust. The ban sparked widespread outcry over concerns of antisemitism and historical erasure, and Spiegelman referred to the decision as “myopic” and “absurd,” The Los Angeles Times reported.

The message also follows a recent lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against a Missouri school district, which said that the school’s decision to ban eight critically-acclaimed books discussing race, gender and sexuality violated the First Amendment, according to McClatchy News.

And in North Carolina, a group of librarians in Wake County recently told their school board that the push to pull LGBTQ-centric books from shelves would be harmful to students, the News and Observer reported.

“Not only does this harm the students whose identities are authentically and thoughtfully portrayed in this literature, it harms all students who do not get to learn and build empathy,” Julie Stivers, the county’s Librarian of the Year, told the board at the Feb. 1 meeting, according to the outlet.

This story was originally published February 16, 2022 at 4:58 PM with the headline "LeVar Burton lauds banned books on ‘Daily Show’: ‘That’s where the good stuff is’."