Many, many moons ago, besides The Nature Company store at South Coast Plaza (I think that was his favorite place on Earth), one of my go-to sources for fantastic kid gifts for Ebola* and Christmas presents for nieces and nephews was the Smithsonian bookstore children's catalog. Naturally, it was full of great titles, but they also carried some of the coolest kids' educational games and projects you simply could not find anywhere. It was always a hoot to go through it and see what was new in dinosaur bone kits or space, or if they had a new set of Egyptian hieroglyphic stamps I could order for him.
Just as fun and unique stuff as I've ever seen. We also got our Christmas cards from them a few times. Those selections were really terrific, too, and, as we subscribed to Smithsonian magazine, the little member discount didn't hurt a bit.
The last issue I really remember receiving was the year they'd helped Mel Gibson with historical details for the Gullah village depicted in The Patriot, so that tells you how long ago that was. Once our little guy had grown out of making plaster-of-Paris dinosaur track molds and moved on to computers, and our subscription lapsed after two decades, I kind of put the Smithsonian out of my mind.
So imagine my surprise a couple of years ago, as those nieces and nephews have now started their own families, and I thought I'd see what the Smithsonian had to offer as far as reading-to-your-kid material went. I mean, the selection had always been stellar, from old folk stories to sharks.
Wasn't I bummed to see a few books on subjects like lions, space, a dinosaur or two, and bats or something. Everything else - every last title- was either Afro-American centric or rainbow-hued affirmational tracts. Now, those have their place, I guess, but what happened to the rest of us? Don't we live here and have children who might just enjoy being read a fairy tale or learning old folklore? Not everyone needs constant reassurance that THEY'RE GREAT AND REALLY SPECIAL. I'll bet even the audience those books are intended for would maybe just like to hear an engaging STORY instead of being fed that all the time.
I wish I had kept screenshots.
Two virtue-signaling pages of social-justice-warrior propaganda for tykes.
I distinctly remember blowing a gasket all over again when I told Major Dad about it that evening.
I went back and looked today, and the bookstore doesn't even have a children's or youth category anymore. They have something called 'In the Classroom,' that, with the exception of a 'joyful' ABC book, doesn't really have anything for younger kiddos, although some of the titles do look fun if you've got a tweener who are hep for dinosaurs, space, bats, etc.
So I searched for 'children's' and came up basically empty again, except for a 'joyful' counting book...
123 I Like You and Me: A Joyful Counting Book
...by the same author of the aforementioned 'joyful ABC' book.
New from the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture and the author and illustrator of A Is for All the Things You Are
You’re special, and that’s what counts! The brightly illustrated 123 I Like You and Me: A Joyful Counting Book not only teaches children numbers 1-10, but asks questions that encourage them to express their thoughts, emotions, and connection to other people:
Eight children just the same
Eight children unique and different
All have feelings—happy ones, sad ones, scary ones, angry ones.
Each child expresses feelings in different ways.
What feelings did you have today? What do you think the children in the pictures are feeling?
With accessible language and vivid illustrations, this book is perfect for families and educators who want to empower children to feel good about themselves, communicate their feelings, and embrace the unique characteristics of the people around them.
Why must progressives always, always turn everything into a psychology experiment?
Can't kids just learn to count, or, I don't know, FUN STUFF like baby unicorns, instead of having to make it to number three and then having to psychoanalyze why a child said three and what would a black person call it, and what about the black person's life made her maybe say something different that you, and why do you owe her an apology for saying 'three' before she did?
OMG, they ruin everything.
But that's pretty much where the once much-beloved-by-me Smithsonian's children's section had literally collapsed to.
According to a report the White House dropped on the 4th of July, the whole institution suffers from progressive woke syndrome. It sounds like they may have caught it just in time.
The White House released a scathing 162-page report accusing the Smithsonian Institution of engaging in "extreme political activism" and presenting "a radical view of American history."
The report, which was published on Saturday, July 4, particularly took aim at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History (NMAH), accusing its leadership of adopting "an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens."
The report accuses the museum of "anti-White activism," "illegal alien activism," and "transgender activism." It also includes many photos of materials the White House has identified as problematic.
Naturally, the snooty toots at the museum itself sniffed back at the knuckle draggers questioning their slanted scholarship.
*sniff* DID NOT AND HOW DARE THEY
...Asked about the report, a spokesperson for the Smithsonian, which oversees 21 museums, galleries and the national zoo, told ABC News that the institution remains committed to impartial learning.
"For more than 180 years, the Smithsonian has served the American public with nonpartisan and independent scholarship, and we remain committed to doing so," the spokesperson said on Sunday.
The President of the Organization of American Historians had a historical hysterical hissy fit.
Trump’s Attacks on the Smithsonian Are an Attack on American History
WaPo pulled a PeeWee 'I know you are, but what am I?'
The only bias uncovered in the White House’s Smithsonian report is its own
A White House report alleges radical bias at the National Museum of American History. But the assembled evidence reveals a large and vibrant institution carrying out its mission.
They forgot PeeWee's answer was very Trumpish.
INFINITY!
The Museum Association's take was a little more measured, calling it the 'ideological battle between the museum and the Trump administration.'
...The new report focuses in particular on the National Museum of American History in Washington, one of 22 sites within the Smithsonian complex.
It accuses the museum of “ideological capture”, stating: “Our central finding is not that the museum has simply added overlooked stories, corrected perceived errors, or broadened its historical scope.
“Rather, it is that museum leadership has explicitly adopted an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens.”
The report documents what it describes as a “shift from history to activism” at the museum, singling out its director Anthea Hartig’s statements about social justice and reframing the “traditional celebratory narrative of US history for visitors”, and previously stated plans to “problematize” this year's 250th anniversary of the signing of the US Declaration of Independence.
“These are not the words of an objective historian, but rather those of an activist advancing an ideological agenda contradictory to the museum’s founding purpose of fostering patriotism,” the report states.
It goes on to say that the museum “purposely presents America as a problematic country irredeemably conceived, founded by deeply flawed men, and still operating today as an instrument of systemic racism and oppression”.
I have to say, particularly after decades of dealing with the bookstore, I can see where someone would feel the museum has lost its way in certain respects. Some of the examples they have are pretty offensive, not to mention questionable in accuracy.
In the Benjamin Franklin exhibit, they devoted 20% of the space to "Enslaved People" and asked visitors whether Franklin conducted electric shock experiments on slaves — with zero evidence.
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 7, 2026
They took one of America's greatest minds and smeared him with baseless accusations.
6/ pic.twitter.com/HE5GwjkEBQ
This is totally whack.
A museum supposedly for families and children displayed:
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 7, 2026
— A sadomasochistic "crotch harness"
— A "trans nonbinary" person's "chest binder"
— Pages from a 6yo girl's diary in which she prays "every night for my penis to grow"
This sick material is sexualizing kids.
2/ pic.twitter.com/Hfk57h0uzp
And nobody likes us whiteys. We already knew that.
Their endorsed "toolkit" for museum professionals listed "rational thinking" and "hard work" as traits of "White Supremacy Culture."
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 7, 2026
Anti-White racism taught as official museum guidance.
7/ pic.twitter.com/mSZknkGP13
I'm sure it hasn't all been bastardized to beejeebus, and, conversely, I am sure there are things the report found offensive that probably really aren't. But I imagine that the predominant tilt of most, at least the social aspects, of many displays' verbiage will be progressive in tone, perhaps even questionable in truth, if it's been recently 'updated.'
I don't think it's a bad thing to have the comfortable, dusty dominions shaken up every once in a while. Anyone who's been settled in someplace for too long gets smug and complacent, and no one does that more easily or more egregiously than academics.
The Smithsonian is literally a castle, and sometimes those need to be stormed.
Particularly if the people paying for it live on the outside while the people on the inside, with treasures that belong to everyone, despise them.
*Our son was one of the very first computer and gaming savants in the early 90s, winning tournaments and designing "skins" for games not long after Al Gore invented the innerwebs. Unfortunately, he also had a knack for catching the first viruses. One was so virulent that it wiped his computer and all of my work and required one of his father's computer geeks to come from base with a DoD program to finally exterminate it. His uncle Bingley nicknamed him "Ebola," and it has been his nom-de-innerwebs ever since.
