Paul Castle, an artist who is both blind and gay, is the author and illustrator of two adorable children’s books; Pringle & Finn (The Pengrooms) and The Secret Ingredient. Unfortunately, his works found themselves at the centre of book banning drama after a bookstore returned their entire order to the artist.
Paul has lost over 90% of his vision to the untreatable eye disease, Retinitis Pigmentosa, and his life and the way he creates his artwork – including that for his two books – are well chronicled on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Many people will know Paul, and his husband Matthew from their shared platform which features content about living as a blind man, Paul’s guide dog Mr Maple, Matthew and Paul’s relationship, and of course, the fun pranks Matthew pulls on Paul.
Paul recently took to social media to talk about the moment he found out that his children’s book had been banned, for supposedly breaching one of the store’s policies. An email, read aloud by technology that aids Paul, told him: “I’m writing with some unfortunate news it seems the person who placed the order for your books wasn’t entirely up to speed on our policies”.
Tanya, the person emailing, added that they had returned the two boxes of books – which totalled around 100 of The Secret Ingredient books – and they would cover shipping costs but would expect a refund when the book arrived back with the artist.
The email added: “While I think your book is very charming, it’s just not something we can carry in our store at this time.”
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Paul Castle explained that when he first received the order of the books he had been very excited describing it as an author’s dream to have their work in a bookstore. He added that he assumed they knew understood the content of the books; which feature two male penguins who deliver cakes to different types of families and eventually adopt their own baby. When he received the further email, he initially thought they might be ordering more books but he was disappointed to learn that instead, they were asking for a refund.
In a follow-up video, a few days later – upon the receipt of the returned books and accompanying plushies – Paul explained further that the reason that so many books were ordered in the first place was because he had been asked to do an in-store reading and signing event for the bookstore.
He added that the person who originally reached out with the order no longer works for the company, which is when Tanya stepped into the picture. It is unclear what happened with regard to the original bookseller.
Paul admits that he was heartbroken by this saga but the response from followers to this story has been surreal and mind-blowing, with too many messages to keep up with. He also added that the returned books had already sold out, and would therefore be signed and sent back out, “from the bottom of my heart I cannot thank you enough… the books are now going to people who really, really want them.
“Thank you for embracing these books. I truly believe stories like this are incredibly important.”
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