Hello, LIWLRA members and friends,
For decades, the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a part of the American Library Association (ALA), has granted the Laura Ingalls Wilder Legacy Award to authors who have contributed, as she did, a lifelong legacy and contribution to children’s literature. As many of you are aware, the ALSC board recently voted to rename the award, erasing Laura Ingalls Wilder from the legacy her works created.
When the LIWLRA board became aware of the pending vote, we drafted a response that we mailed to the chairwoman of the board. Though we did not yet receive a response or reply, we did feel it was important to convey that the legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder is valuable. You can read our letter in the attached file, and it also was included in the April newsletter to our members.
We stand by our board’s consensus position that the legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder, though encumbered with the perspectives of racism that were representative of her time and place, also includes overwhelmingly positive contributions to children’s literature that have touched generations past and will reach into the future. We believe it is not beneficial to the body of literature to sweep away her name as though the perspectives in her books never existed. Those perspectives are teaching moments to show generations to come how the past was and how we, as a society, must move forward with a more inclusive and diverse perspective.
The LIWLRA continues its mission of preserving and promoting the legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder through research, events, awareness, and unwavering support for the museums and sites that honor her across the country. We hope to see you at our next “LauraPalooza” conference in 2019, where we can continue dialog on this and the many other cultural, scientific, literary, and scholarly topics threaded into the study of Laura Ingalls Wilder, her family, and their words and works.
We ask that all discussion of this topic remain respectful of the many diverse perspectives across the country, from the descendants of white settlers to those of the Native Americans displaced by them and the African-Americans enslaved by Americans. We will moderate this discussion heavily and will delete posts that we deem to be inappropriate.
Respectfully,
The LIWLRA Board
