Melville House Books

Detail from a "Mysterious Benedict" cover showing Sticky Washington character as a white person

Yet another publisher is in coming under fire for depicting white characters on the cover of a book about black people. As Rocco Staino reports in a School Library Journal story, “Little Brown Books for Young Readers is changing the covers on Trenton Lee Stewart’s ‘Mysterious Benedict Society‘ series, following complaints that the character Sticky Washington, described as having light brown skin, appears on all three covers as white.”

The company’s head publicist, Melanie Chang, yesterday announced, “We are adjusting the covers of all three titles immediately as they reprint in order to offer a more faithful rendering as soon as possible.â€

But Staino says “Librarian bloggers and those on Twitter have long discussed the misrepresentation of Sticky Washington in the books’ illustrations.” So what finally prompted the publisher to react?

One can only think it was the worldwide coverage — and scorn — given two other recent similar incidents (see the earlier MobyLives story). But of course, that just made this story more likely to get attention, whereas if Little, Brown had just listened to those online commentators a while ago ….

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.