George has Four Mommies

Public domain image from a manuscript of the Bhagavata Purana, available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ganesha_ink.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Ganesha_ink.jpg.

Protests Erupt over Children’s Book!

When Robert Benton wrote George has Four Mommies, he wasn’t intending to start a controversy. He simply wanted to write a book so that children in polygamous families would have stories about families more like theirs.

But when the Librarians’ Association of America featured George has Four Mommies as Inclusive Book of the Month™, a series of riots and protests flared up all over the country. Ryan Rocifero, our Roving Reporter reports from a Chicago library:

Here in Chicago, librarians report that not fewer than 21,496 copies of the book have been taken by patrons and ‘lost’. One copy was found in a library toilet, two others stuffed behind a library bookshelf, and one, to everyone’s lasting astonishment, was found in between the panes of a double pane window, where it remains. Unconfirmed reports claim that in a suburban library in Oak Park, a copy of the controversial book was found burning in the young adult room.

The book explores what reviewer David Poulin calls the “banal and sickeningly sweet”1 adventures of a cat named Plungerhead. Plungerhead frolics with his doggy friends Pal and Pup. Plungerhead and co. end up meeting George, who, along with his four mommies, 87.324π±(mx+b)2 assorted siblings, fourteen brothers, batman, superman, and green lantern, is having a peaceful and relaxing day at the local nuclear reactor.


Public domain image from a manuscript of the Bhagavata Purana, available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ganesha_ink.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Ganesha_ink.jpg.

  1. David Poulin, “How Can Such a Stupid Book Cause a Nationwide Controversy,” South Georgia Review of Books and Octopuses 23 (2014): 3-4.

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