ANDREW LATIES co-founded Easton Book Festival, Book & Puppet Company, Vox Pop, The Children's Bookstore, Chicago Children's Museum Store, and The Eric Carle Museum Bookstore. He shared the 1987 Women's National Book Association's Pannell Award for bringing children and books together. His Rebel Bookseller: Why Indie Businesses Represent Everything You Want to Fight For-From Free Speech to Buying Local to Building Communities won the 2006 Independent Publisher Award and is available in a second edition from Seven Stories Press.
""At a time when the American government and right-wing organizations hypocritically claim to set moral standards for children by banning numerous books and destroying libraries and bookstores, Andrew Laties exposes their hypocrisy by recounting his struggles to maintain a sense of honesty and democracy among educators and bookstore owners. You're Telling My Kids They Can't Read This Book? is a must read for anyone troubled by the plight in America when groups of adults want to dumb down children. Laties has fought and continues to fight oppressive guardians of ignorance, and his book reveals that his fight is our fight.""-Jack Zipes, Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota ""In this slender volume, Andrew Laties provides us with a rapid-fire history of children's book publishing, the politics of book-banning, the politics of public libraries and librarians, the complicated issues surrounding censorship, and a how-to guide on launching a book fair, laced throughout with an emphatic call to action to preserve our freedom of expression at a time of unprecedented governmental attacks on it.""-Paul Gulino, author, Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach; Professor, Chapman University ""Really wonderful! Powerful, poignant with dashes of humor. Well written-the narrative barrels along-lucid yet profound. An important read in these treacherous times.""-H. Nichols B. Clark, Founding Director and Chief Curator Emeritus, The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art