Yes, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Is Banned!

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? is one of the most beloved children’s books ever published. Written by Bill Martin Jr. and illustrated by Eric Carle, each page asks an animal what it sees, and the animal names the next colorful creature in the chain. “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see? I see a red bird looking at me.” First published in 1967 by Henry Holt, it has sold millions of copies and is a staple of preschool classrooms and bedtime routines worldwide.

In 2010, the Texas State Board of Education banned the book from the state curriculum. The reason? A board member confused author Bill Martin Jr. (1916-2004), who wrote children’s books, with Bill Martin (born 1947), a philosopher at DePaul University who wrote a book called Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation. That’s it. They thought the children’s author was a Marxist. The Christian Science Monitor reported that after the mix-up was publicized, the ban was eventually reversed, but not before it became one of the most absurd examples of book banning in American history.

Why You Should Read This

There’s no hidden political message in Brown Bear. There’s no message at all, unless you count “red birds exist” and “ducks are yellow.” It’s a book for toddlers who are learning colors and animals. Eric Carle’s tissue-paper collage illustrations are beautiful. Kids love the rhythm and repetition. It’s been read aloud roughly a billion times, and every reading is exactly as subversive as a nap.

The Texas ban is worth knowing about because it shows how broken the book-banning process can be. Nobody on the State Board of Education bothered to check whether the Bill Martin on the curriculum was the same Bill Martin who wrote about Marxism. They just saw the name, panicked, and pulled a picture book about bears and ducks. If the system can accidentally ban Brown Bear, imagine what it does on purpose.