Sarah Broussard was taking a brief break between running a toy museum and raising her 4-year-old twin girls when she came across the book ABC-Deconstructing Gender At a Target store on Sharn Street in Houston, Texas.
“There was a Pride section that had just been set up, and it was one of the things in the middle of the main aisle,” she remembered. “I saw it, and it’s really cute the way it’s painted and it caught my eye.”
She picked up one of the stacks of copies that stand among the merchandise Target sets in its stores to celebrate Pride month each year. He flipped it to make sure it was age-appropriate.
The book seemed like a good opportunity to continue her effort to keep her twin from accepting gender-based stereotypes, and she took a copy up to the self-checkout register. When he put it through the scanner, a message flashed on the screen.
“A team member is on the way…”
She couldn’t even imagine what could be the problem. The clerk who came was equally surprised.
“Oh, it’s recalled,” said the clerk from Broussard’s recollection.
“It’s a book,” said Broussard.
“Yeah, it’s really weird,” said the clerk. “Usually things are remembered based on the ingredients in them or something like that. I’ve never seen that before.”
The clerk was unable to facilitate the purchase, and Broussard returned empty-handed and confused. He tried to solve the mystery by posting a video on Tiktok.
“I can’t find anything online about this,” she said. “So, I was wondering if anyone else heard anything about it. It’s in their pride section. Nothing about the recall on Google.
Broussard, who is the founder and owner of the Houston Toy Museum, had no immediate answer as to why the book might be recalled.
She later learned that Target had decided to remove some Pride items from its stores in response to the scare.
“For more than a decade, Target has offered an assortment of products aimed at celebrating Pride Month,” the company said in a statement earlier this week. “Since introducing this year’s collection, we have experienced threats affecting our team members’ sense of safety and well-being while at work. Given these volatile conditions, we are making adjustments to our plans, including the removal of items that have been at the center of the most significant collision behavior.
Those items included “tuck friendly” swimsuits, which some right-wing disruptive artists claimed were for children but were, in fact, only for adults.
Kayla Castaneda, a crisis communications specialist for the retail giant, declined to tell The Daily Beast whether the children’s book — still available online — was among the items pulled from the store. “We have nothing to share at this time,” she wrote in an email.
After her TikTok video, Broussard also found herself criticized for simply trying to buy the book.
“Many conservative Christians were saying things like, ‘You shouldn’t be a mother’… ‘I hope you’re not a teacher’… ‘That’s awful you’d want to buy this book for your kids,’ ‘ Broussard told The Daily Beast.
she was finally able to get a copy ashandchess.com, a website run by two authors, Ashley Moleso and Charles Needham, who describe themselves as a gay and trans couple. Broussard made a second TikTok video, in which he read the book aloud in response to those who judged it by its title.
“Just to show that what you think is in this book is not in this book,” she said. “It’s really just teaching that there are boys that can be nurturing and a girl that can be tough and brave and that we don’t have to fit into these gender roles that have been laid out for us.”
“It hasn’t necessarily started a wider conversation yet because they’re only 4,” he said. “He liked to see the picture.”
Broussard said she has always tried to cast her opposite strong female characters.
“And so I think for him it was just another book,” she said.
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