Illustrated children's books continue to be published in great numbers. There is interest in these books, in the same way there has always been interest in poets who write greeting cards.
New children's books that speak with greater detail to empathy-building means older books are moved along from libraries or publishers' inventories in equally great numbers. It is believed there is no historical imagination in children under 6, so no point in children's books set in anything but the never-ending present.
A friend who teaches elementary school told me about a library sale of children's books last week. Some of these books were published as recently as 2016, and were being sold at 25-cents a pop. Recently, I picked up a children's book by Helen Diehl Olds (1896-1981) that had been "discarded" by Prince Rupert's Westview Elementary. The book is called Miss Hattie and the Monkey (1958) and is a racist attempt at anti-racism.
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