Children’s book publisher Scholastic has pulled “The Adventures of Ook and Gluk,” a spinoff of the popular “Captain Underpants” series, following a re-evaluation that found the book “contains harmful racial stereotypes.
The author, Dav Pilkey, also offered an effusive apology on YouTube and pledged to send profits from sales of the graphic novel to an organization working to end racially motivated violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI).
Fox News reports that the graphic novel “follows a pair of friends who travel from 500,001 B.C. to 2222, where they meet a martial arts instructor who teaches them kung fu and they learn principles found in Chinese philosophy,” a character that Scholastic now says is “harmful to Asians” because it embodies “passive racism” and embraces a “harmful racial stereotype” that Pilkey now says is “wrong and harmful to my Asian readers.”
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Scholastic did not define “passive racism,” but Diversity Inc., a news organization that provides training on diversity, inclusion, and Critical Race
