On this week’s episode, Bethany Mandel joins to discuss her new children’s book series called Heroes of Liberty. The books focus on American values in an entertaining and engaging way, bringing magic and joy back to your child’s bedtime. So, if you are a parent or grandparent or an aunt or uncle and are concerned about the woke children’s literature lining the shelves of your local bookstore, the classroom, and pages of Amazon, then this podcast episode is for you.
Bethany Mandel is a contributing writer for Deseret News and an editor at Ricochet.com. She frequently writes for the New York Post and the Spectator. In the recent past, she has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, Daily Mail, and The Atlantic, among others. She is a stay-at-home mother of five, homeschooling her children. She lives with her husband Seth and their children in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside of Washington D.C. She is often a guest on Fox News and radio outlets across the country.
TRANSCRIPT
Beverly Hallberg:
Welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg, and on today’s episode, Bethany Mandel joins us to discuss her children’s book series called Heroes for Liberty. These books focus on American values in an entertaining and engaging way, bringing magic and joy back to your child’s bedtime. So if you are a parent or a grandparent or an aunt or an uncle, and are concerned about the woke children’s literature lining the shelves of your local bookstore, the classroom, and pages of Amazon, then this episode is for you.
Bethany Mandel is a contributing writer for Deseret News and an editor at Ricochet.com. She frequently writes for the New York Post and The Spectator. In the recent past, she has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, Daily Mail, and The Atlantic, among others. She is a stay-at-home mother of five, homeschooling her children. Bethany, a real pleasure to have you on She Thinks today.
Bethany Mandel:
Thank you so much for having me.
Beverly Hallberg:
Now, you are a writer. You are prolific on Twitter. I’m one of your roughly 100,000 followers. What made you go from op-ed and essay writing to editing a children’s book series?
Bethany Mandel:
Yeah, so I write a lot about the situation in schools and in libraries, and it’s really depressing, to be honest with you. It’s really easy to feel like it’s a David and Goliath fight, and we’re the David and they’re the Goliath. I wanted to pick up my slingshot and throw some stones, and so that’s what Heroes of Liberty is. It’s us trying to throw some stones at Goliath, because we can’t count on the woke children’s publishing world to produce books that we are excited about and that we want to share with our children. So we just decided, “Let’s just do it ourselves,” and there’s definitely a market there.
Beverly Hallberg:
There definitely is. Again, the book series is called Heroes for Liberty. But I just want to give some titles of some woke books that are out there, just to give some perspective of what parents are finding. So we have A is for Activism, Antiracist Baby, The GayBCs, Feminist Baby, Woke Baby, C is for Consent. We are seeing woke literature that is targeted towards babies, not just young children, not just teenagers. When did this become a problem, and how prevalent is it?
Bethany Mandel:
I think that the most accurate way to gauge that question is the American Library Association, the ALA, has a list of banned books. On the list, they chronicle the books that get the most objections in the libraries from parents. If you look at the books from 2013, the most popular book on the top of that list was Captain Underpants, because it has potty humor. My kids read it. There’s been a lot of conversations about farts ever since.
But it took a turn. Now on the top of the list, for several years running now, is a book called George, which is about a transgender child. And it’s a middle-grade book, so it’s written for kids like eight and up, eight to 12 or so. And it talks about hormones. It talks about surgery. It talks about transitioning. And it also talks about… Because that wasn’t enough, it also talks about inappropriate material that the child found under his dad’s bed.
Beverly Hallberg:
When we think about these books and how they’re being targeted, what would you say is the goal of these books? Obviously, there is an agenda behind it, but how do you describe what that agenda is?
Bethany Mandel:
It’s a couple things. I think that the biggest objective is to normalize gender fluidity and questioning gender. If you were a kid and you were watching TV and looking at commercials, the objective was to get kids to bug their parents about buying Tickle Me Elmo, and it worked. Tickle Me Elmo was the most popular toy that Christmas season when I was a kid.
It’s the same idea with books. George, which I’ve unfortunately read as part of my research, George wants to tell kids that it’s okay to feel like you’re a boy or a girl, and that that’s a thing that can be changed; and that if you’re feeling conflicted, if you’re feeling emotionally unmoored, this is a way to set yourself on an even keel because this is the magic bullet solution if you don’t enjoy what’s happening to your body. What woman loves what’s happening to their body when you hit puberty? And so they tell girls, “There’s an answer. It’s a magic solution, and it’s hormones and it’s surgery.”
Then the line that is in George that I think is the most terrifying is, “You need your parents’ permission to do these things,” i.e., get your parents’ permission to do these things because this is the solution; this is what you need in order to feel like you’re safe from the swirl of emotions and hormones and everything that happens when you’re a prepubescent girl. That’s who this is marketed for. It’s marketed for prepubescent girls.
Beverly Hallberg:
When I think about just books and children in general, they have such an important place. I know that there are lots of studies about parents who read to their children. You see great benefits to the children as they get older if their parents did read to them. I even know when you’re thinking about tough concepts, I know when it is potty training time, you read to your child a book about using the potty. Or I remember when my mom had another baby, and I found out about my mom having another baby because she read me a book that I was going to be a big sister. So we use this avenue, this medium of books, to help children learn. Would you say, especially when we see the woke ideology seeping in, this has great impact, because there is a way that children just learn through books that is not something that you can then take back? It’s hard to put it back in once it’s been out there.
Bethany Mandel:
Yeah. No, absolutely. Kids are very black-and-white thinkers, and books are a source of facts and information. And so anything an eight-year-old reads in a book is factual as far as they’re concerned. They don’t have a brain that can discern when someone is trying to put one over on them. What’s really terrifying about these books written for middle-grade kids is that these kids are reading them independently. I know that I’m not going to read ABCs of AOC to my children, which I have —
Beverly Hallberg:
No? You’re not going to —
Bethany Mandel:
No, weirdly, right? I have it here, again, as research. I have a whole box of banned books in my house. But I know I’m not going to be reading these A for Activist baby books. The dangerous books are not those books because parents have to read those to their children. The dangerous books is the middle-grade books because they’re exhibiting all of these ideas and promoting all of these ideas, really, behind parents’ backs because I’m not pre-reading every book that my child reads.
I had a pretty eye-opening experience in November or so. I was doing research about children’s literature just in general. I’m a conservative writer. I’m very prolific. This is my zone. This is where I live. And I was at the library with my kids, and I have five kids. My eight-year-old runs up to me, and she’s like, “I want this book. It’s a graphic novel about girl soccer players.” I was like, “Whatever. Just leave me alone. Let me talk to my friend,” because I had five kids coming up to me wanting different things. So I just said, “Fine. Whatever. Put it in the bag. Here’s my library card. You get to scan it. Enjoy. Whatever.”
I’m having calls with parents in Loudoun County about their effort to clean up their school library, and two different moms mention the same book, Breakaways. It’s a graphic novel. The first one, I write it down, whatever, don’t give it another thought, because she lists a number of books, including George, the one that I discussed earlier. And then another mom mentioned Breakaways, so I look back at my notes. I’m like, “Oh, I guess that’s why it sounds familiar. I don’t know.” And then I think to myself, “I’m going to check my library bag,” which I hadn’t taken out of my car yet. Thank God I’m like this is one of the times that not being organized had saved me. I look at my library bag, and sure enough, the book that my daughter had picked out and put in the bag was that book that two different Loudoun County moms had warned me about.
I look it up and I look inside the book, and sure enough, there’s a scene that is… Outside of LGBTQ issues, there’s a scene between two girls who are having an exploratory experience at a sleepover. Outside of the fact that it’s two girls, and there are people who might find that objectionable, an eight-year-old girl should not be told that she can have an exploratory experience with a friend at a sleepover at eight years old.
The thing that kills me about all of this promotion of gender ideology is that it’s a form of grooming. When you tell an eight-year-old that they can have an experience like that behind their parents’ back, and promote that idea, that’s a stone’s throw away from any number of abuse issues. We came on the heels of #MeToo, and then you’re telling eight-year-olds to ignore any internal conflict that they might feel about being in a bathroom with a biological male, and that they can have an exploratory experience with a friend behind their parents’ back at a sleepover. This is a dangerous road that the left is going down while at the same time talking about #MeToo. This is how we get there. That’s the road, and you’re paving it.
Beverly Hallberg:
When you talk to other moms, even fathers, dads, do you find that parents feel this burden to now have to read through the books that their kids have because you can’t trust them anymore? Like you even said, you weren’t even aware that this book would have this content in it. Are we at a place where parents feel like they have to supervise everything that their child is reading just in case?
Bethany Mandel:
I have a couple pieces of advice. First of all, I think that not enough parents realize that they have to be supervising. I think that parents of our generation have the perspective that as long as they’re reading, it’s good. I compare it to food and eating. We would never say, “I don’t care what my kid is eating as long as they’re eating,” because there’s junk food and then there’s literal poison. We screen what goes in our kids’ mouths, so why aren’t we screening what’s going into their brains? Arguably, maybe that has more longer-lasting implications, unless they’re drinking bleach, which children do —
Beverly Hallberg:
Can happen.
Bethany Mandel:
That happens. I’m not going to say that I’ve called Poison Control before.
I think that parents don’t realize that they have to be doing that screening, and so once that realization takes place, there’s a couple of tricks that I recommend. First of all, look up every book on Amazon and look at the one-star reviews, because parents who have come before you often have opinions. I think that it’s important to, if you don’t want to do that, and even if you do, old books are usually safe. Anything written before 1980 is usually pretty safe.
Also, books like ours, there’s other books like The Tuttle Twins. You’re not going to find anything objectionable in Heroes of Liberty or The Tuttle Twins. That’s a guarantee. You stock your shelves with books like that, and then when you go to the library, just scan it on your Amazon app and look at the one-star reviews. That’s an easy way to cull 95% of this stuff.
Beverly Hallberg:
That’s a perfect segue. Let’s talk about the book series Heroes for Liberty. What would parents expect if they decided to purchase these for their kids?
Bethany Mandel:
Yeah, so we have out right now five books. There’s Thomas Sowell, Ronald Reagan, Amy Coney Barrett, and then we release one a month now. Our February book of the month was John Wayne, and our March book of the month is Alexander Hamilton. Folks can buy them on our website, or they can subscribe and get one a month and it’s just automated, which is nice to be able to fill your bookshelves.
We decided to do biographies for children for a couple reasons. I think that the best way to learn history is through the prism of an individual’s story. And so, when you read about Alexander Hamilton, you’re reading about the Founding Fathers, but you’re forming an emotional connection to Hamilton and his story and looking at the incredible illustrations.
It’s really nice that we’ve chosen a couple of our figures based on the message as opposed to the person. For Alexander Hamilton, it was just the person and the history, whatever. But for John Wayne, the theme of that book is manhood and honor. That’s a message that young boys are not getting now, about what it means to be a man and grow into a man, and the importance of manhood and honor. They’re told that their masculinity is toxic.
For the Amy Coney Barrett book, which is perhaps one of the more controversial because a lot of people on a lot of sides don’t necessarily love her, but the theme of that book is the fact that she’s a justice and a mother. We talk a lot about, and I write about this a lot for Deseret, we talk a lot about the plummeting birth rates and the myriad of reasons why that is what it is. I think the biggest reason is because motherhood has a PR problem. We tell young women and girls that motherhood is oppressive and that you’re a martyr. And we say this even on the right. We say mothers are martyrs. I’m like, “I’m not a martyr. I just really like my kids, and I think they make me happy.”
The Amy Coney Barrett book tells girls a message that they’re not hearing now in modern literature, that they can be professionally successful, which is what girls are told ad nauseam, but also that you can have a family, and also have a big family, and introduces the idea of adoption and biological family and blended. There’s a whole bunch of themes written in there, but it’s all about the fact that she is professionally successful and also a mother. And so I think that young girls are not getting that message, and it’s a really important one to fight back against the culture war against motherhood and against families.
Beverly Hallberg:
When we think about, “Okay, a book series on American values,” usually we think of, “Oh, this is going to focus on the Founding Fathers,” but I like what you said there. While there may be Founding Fathers in there, this is really about themes that are healthy for young girls and young boys. What age range are the books ideally for?
Bethany Mandel:
Ideally, it’s for ages seven to 12, but there’s wiggle room on either side. The illustrations, we really banked a lot of money in. It was funny, we actually had a hard time finding illustrators who would take on the project once they heard who they were illustrating because they didn’t want to get canceled. So we had to go to Bulgaria to find our —
Beverly Hallberg:
Really?
Bethany Mandel:
Yeah. So one of our artists is Bulgarian. Another one is Brazilian. It’s literally every continent, basically. I think there’s another one from Nigeria, I want to say.
But the wiggle room with the illustrations lends it to… My four-year-old really likes reading them, and my two-year-old loves looking at the pictures in John Wayne. She picks it up, and she’s like, “Oh, it’s a green book. It’s John Wayne.” She picks it up and knows that it’s John Wayne. So there’s definitely wiggle room on the front end.
And on the older years, they can read it by themselves. You talked earlier about the importance of reading out loud, and I’m a super deep believer in that as a homeschooler. One of my favorite parenting books that I would send home with every parent is Jim Trelease’s Read-Aloud Handbook, and Sarah Mackenzie’s blog Read-Aloud Revival is also fantastic. There’s been this renaissance of the understanding that we should be reading out loud to our kids and that the benefits are astronomically high.
Especially when they’re in a classroom where a teacher is masked, it’s so important that they see someone’s mouth reading to them because it is really helpful for their literacy skills, especially when their teacher might have their mouth covered. You’re pointing to every word. I’m thinking of my four-year-old, who I’m teaching to read right now. You’re pointing to every word and you say, “B is for boy.” You really emphasize that mouth movement. “And D is for dog.” I don’t know if you can… For people who are not watching on video, you really emphasize those mouth movements, and that’s really important for early literacy, and a way to undo some of the damage that we’re doing in schools.
Beverly Hallberg:
Tell me about the success of these books so far. Have you found that parents out there have been craving something like this?
Bethany Mandel:
Yeah. So I just got back from CPAC over the weekend, and we had hundreds of people come up to us and say, “Oh my God, why didn’t this exist?” People were like, “Oh, is this an organization?” I’m like, “No, we’re for profit.” We would like to make money, and we are making money because there is a market for this. People are looking for books. When you walk into a Barnes & Noble, you will see quite literally 27 versions of a Ruth Bader Ginsburg biography written for children, zero about Clarence Thomas or Amy Coney Barrett. The same thing with Kamala Harris. There’s a million biographies of her right now. And our April book is Margaret Thatcher.
Beverly Hallberg:
What is the cost, and where can people find them?
Bethany Mandel:
It’s heroesofliberty.com, and the cost is 199 for a 12-year subscription. We’re still fiddling with the prices of the individual books, but it’s about $20, $25 per book. We’re still finding that sweet spot. The sweetest spot is the subscriptions anyway, because then you can automate it and have it sent to your house.
Beverly Hallberg:
I love the idea of a book a month, different themes that children can have. Again, you can go and get that, heroesofliberty.com. Did I get that correct?
Bethany Mandel:
Yep.
Beverly Hallberg:
Heroesofliberty.com. Bethany Mandel, thank you so much for your wonderful work on this, and also joining us on She Thinks today.
Bethany Mandel:
Thank you so much.
Beverly Hallberg:
Before you all go, Independent Women’s Forum does want you to know that we rely on the generosity of supporters like you. An investment in IWF fuels our efforts to enhance freedom, opportunity, and well-being for all Americans, so please consider making a small donation to IWF by visiting iwf.org/donate. That’s iwf.org/donate.
Last, if you enjoyed this episode of She Thinks, do leave us a rating or a review. It does help. And we’d love it if you share this episode and let your friends know where they can find more She Thinks. From all of us here at IWF, thanks for watching.