Why Is the Pentagon So Scared of Julianne Moore?
Book-ban insanity comes for Freckleface Strawberry.
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Here’s something ridiculous and depressing: The Department of Defense Education Activity school system is pulling books “potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology topics” from its classrooms and libraries around the world, and The Guardian reports that among these “radical” works under a “compliance review” is a 2007 picture book by Julianne Moore titled Freckleface Strawberry. The actor responded to the news in an Instagram post, writing, “It is a great shock for me to learn that my first book, Freckleface Strawberry, has been banned by the Trump Administration from schools run by the Department of Defense.”
To clarify, the book has been selected for review, so there’s a chance it hasn’t yet been banned, but it’s sad that a picture book about self-acceptance is judged on its face as threatening this administration’s Project 2025–inflected ideology, as though loving one’s freckles is a slippery slope to loving one’s identity. Moore says she is “particularly stunned” because she herself grew up attending a DoDEA-run school on a military base in Frankfurt, Germany.
“It is galling for me to realize that kids like me, growing up with a parent in the service … will not have access to a book written by someone whose life experience is so similar to their own,” Moore writes. “And I can’t help but wonder what is so controversial about this picture book that cause it to be banned by the US Government. I am truly saddened and never thought I would see this in a country where freedom of speech and expression is a constitutional right.” According to a memo sent to DoDEA school staff in Germany, this book ban in the making is a direct response to two executive orders from Donald Trump. It will affect the 69,000 children of DoD civilian and active-duty military families who attend 161 such schools.
It is strange that this completely innocuous book is the one the Department of Defense chose to list as subversive: Moore, it turns out, has a whole rich oeuvre of kids’ books that would probably prove challenging to less advanced readers like Pete Hegseth & Co. Later books in the Freckleface Strawberry series feature the character’s best friend, Windy Pants Patrick, who has two moms. And in 2013, the actor penned My Mom Is a Foreigner, But Not to Me. Many celebrities have reached out in support in Moore’s Instagram comments, but Ellen Pompeo put it best: “I’d say what a bunch of donkeys except I love donkeys soooo once again … don’t even know what to say.”
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