Rightists Matt Walsh and Ashley St. Clair is raving about… about their crazy kid’s books

Right-wing media personality Ashley St. Clair recently opened her mail to find an earlier copy of Johnny the Walrus, a children’s book written by a conservative pundit Matt Walsh.

In the book, Walsh, a podcast host at Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire, tells the story of a boy who is forced to pretend he’s a walrus — a seemingly kid-friendly analogy. children to conservative fears about a liberal establishment they see as allowing transgender children.

Messages do not disturb St. Clair. But the similarities between Walsh’s book and Elephants are not birds, her own recent children’s book about the transition between species, has her outraged. As Walsh’s book climbed the Amazon charts and landed Walsh on Fox News, St. Clair tore him apart on Twitter, accusing Walsh of stealing her book ideas.

St. Clair told The Daily Beast: “It was just a very obvious joke on my part.

The feud between St. Clair and Walsh offer a glimpse into the booming world of conservative children’s books. Amid panic over critical race theory and brainwashing from left-wing public school teachers, pro-Trump parents scrambled for books of their own. In response, a children’s book became the latest publication by right-wing celebrities.

The conservative book craze mirrors the libertarian children’s book boom fueled by the election of Donald Trump. At the trend’s most outrageous peak, #Resistance characters collectively known as the Krassenstein brothers published a children’s book that reimagined special counsel Robert Mueller as a favorite, topless “Robert Moral”.

Conservative figures have made their names in children’s books since the Obama era, when radio host Rush Limbaugh began teaching children about his American history. But now everyone from Congressman Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) to Pizzagate promoter Jack Posobiec has a children’s book.

For his part, St. Clair argues that the growing interest in children’s books on the right is a backlash against children’s books on the left, as well as “all the CRT crap.”

Publisher of St. Clair, Brave Books, may have the most ambitious plan in the conservative kids market. Each book in the Brave Books series fits into a larger literary universe about an archipelago inhabited by anthropomorphic animals whose disputes reflect the culture wars in our world. . In Crenshaw’s book, Fame, Blame and Shame, for example, animal fighting cancels culture. Social media personalities Hodgetwins have their own book published by Brave that promises to expose “the harmful effects of CRT”.

Zach Bell, chief executive officer of Brave Books, told The Daily Beast in an email: “What we’re seeing right now is an explosion of children’s books. “Once conservative parents realized how many children’s books were clearly progressive, they began to look for something that openly proclaimed traditional values ​​and a worldview. conservative”.

Like other Brave books, the promotion of St. Clair focuses on her status as a conservative celebrity — even though one who was lost her place as a “brand ambassador” for Turning Point USA after posing with white nationalist Nick Fuentes. In the book of St. For comparison, in Walsh’s book, the mother of a human boy is bullied by a doctor for treating her son like a walrus, giving him water and forcing him to eat worms.

Walsh did not respond to a request for comment.

St. Clair has numerous complaints about similar Walsh books, saying its illustrations are “horrible” and its execution “obtrusive”. Walsh’s walrus story also has some amazing visuals. At one point, a doctor tried to cut the boy’s hands into fins, peeking over him with a surgical saw.

St. “They’re too on the nose, they lack flair,” says Clair. “It’s not really tasty for kids.”

That didn’t stop Walsh’s book from hitting impressive sales ahead of its release in March. Walsh’s book ranked in the Amazon top 10 after it was announced and was at No. 50 as of the time of this writing. Book also become Amazon’s top LGBTQ book, after it was misclassified in that section. Sales were boosted in part by Walsh’s appearances on Fox News primetime shows hosted by Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson, where he compared the children’s section at a classic bookstore with a “protest rally”.

St. Clair predicts this is just the first children’s book to come from Shapiro’s Daily Wire, with a warm reception welcoming other conservative children’s books. She claims Walsh even alludes to her own book in his publication, with the child in Walsh’s book singing like a bird in its ending.

“Elephants are not birds,” she said.