Melania Trump: Librarian’s book rejection is ‘unfortunate’

First lady Melania Trump has responded to a Massachusetts librarian’s rejection of her book donations, calling the situation “unfortunate.”

Trump sent a gift of 10 Dr. Seuss books to a school in each state earlier this month to mark National Read a Book Day. One school librarian, Liz Phipps Soeiro of Cambridge, Mass., published a blog post explaining that the school would not be keeping the books.

Stephanie Grisham, a spokeswoman for the first lady, said Trump remains committed to her efforts to help children.

“She has demonstrated this in both actions and words since her husband took office, and sending books to children across the country is but one example,” she said. “To turn the gesture of sending young students some books into something divisive is unfortunate.”

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“I work in a district that has plenty of resources, which contributes directly to ‘excellence,'” Soeiro wrote Thursday. “My students have access to a school library with over nine thousand volumes and a librarian with a graduate degree in library science.”

The school district said in a statement that Soeiro was not authorized to accept or reject donated books.

The librarian also criticized the Trump administration’s education department in her blog post.

“Why not go out of your way to gift books to underfunded and underprivileged communities that continue to be marginalized and maligned by policies put in place by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos?” she wrote.

Soeiro wrote that she was “honored” that Trump recognized her students and school, but that the gesture and book selection “could have been better thought out.”

She writes that “Dr. Seuss’s illustrations are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes” and attached a list of book recommendations for Trump that featured stories about children from different cultures.