Kirk Cameron — former "Growing Pains" teen idol turned über-conservative right-wing Christian — is promoting an alternative to Scholastic Book Fairs, partnering with SkyTree Book Fairs in an effort to push "vetted" reading materials to young people.
In a video posted to X (formerly Twitter) ramping up to the holidays, Cameron speaks of the benefits of his new endeavor, saying, “You can replace these harmful Scholastic book fairs with helpful, wholesome book fairs, with 500 books that have all been vetted and screened to take out all of the nasty pornography and the critical race theory and the race stuff."
ANNOUNCEMENT!
— Kirk Cameron (@KirkCameron) November 13, 2023
The support has been incredible from teachers, parents, and school board members nationwide who desire an alternative to @Scholastic. I am heading to Fredericksburg, VA, on December 2nd for our first Public School Book Fair at Riverbend High School!
We are going… pic.twitter.com/Qh7klp3MXl
Earlier in November, Cameron teased these plans on social media in a post asking if people ever wondered how "all the sexually explicit, morally disgusting, and dangerous books get into our children’s schools, classrooms, and libraries," going on to say that he and @SkyTreeFairs "did a deep dive and discovered who the real wolf in Grandma’s clothing is," meaning Scholastic Book Fairs. This is just the latest initiative in what Salon Senior Writer Amanda Marcotte calls "right-wing hysteria" about "pornography" used to justify book banning, writing in a recent commentary on the matter that what's really offensive to the right is "the possibility that a white kid might learn that some other people exist who are not white."
