In the Edmonton Public Library in 2006, a parent objected to an episode at the end of the book in which the Wolf huffs and puffs and blows the four pigs on a raft far out to sea and the pigs then go for a swim. The parent wrote: “I don’t know what the author was hoping children would learn from the actions of the pig [i.e., Ziggy]. Yes, he was creative and perhaps a free spirit; however, he may have delivered his friends into greater danger. What is the lesson learned?” In the end, the library retained the book in its picture book collection.

In 1997, this picture book was banned from use in public schools in Surrey BC along with two others. The books had been submitted to the school board for approval earlier in the school year by a primary-level teacher. Before banning these three books, the board also announced that it would not approve any materials drawn from resource lists submitted by the Gay and Lesbian Educators (GALE) of British Columbia. As a result, parents, teachers, and students launched a lawsuit against the school board, seeking to have the decisions reversed. The books were said by the board to promote a homosexual lifestyle. In December 2002, the Supreme Court of Canada declared that the school board was wrong to ban books depicting homosexual parents in a positive light from elementary classrooms. The B.C. School Act, the court said, requires public schools to be secular, pluralistic and respectful of diversity.

Hold Fast was one of three books challenged by one person in a high school library in Estevan SK in 1988/89. The board followed regular procedures for dealing with challenged materials, and the book remains in the library. The book, credited with being the first young-adult novel to be written in Canada, has been at the heart of many controversies in schools and communities across Canada. A public reading of Hold Fast was held at the Canadian Children’s Book Centre in Toronto to mark Freedom to Read Week 1995.

Was winner of the 1988 Young Adult Fiction Award from the Canadian Library Association and an American Library Association Notable Book. In 1990, the author’s visit to a public school in Orleans ON was cancelled during Canadian Children’s Book Week because the words “hell” and “bastard” made the book unsuitable for 10-to-13-year olds.

This book has been attacked in various jurisdictions. In 1982, the Etobicoke Board of Education was asked to ban it from the high school curriculum. The motion was defeated. In 1990, a complaint from a student and her father led the Essex County Board of Education to establish a written policy to deal with such objections. The book was not withdrawn.

In Ontario in 2010, B’nai Brith Canada called for the removal of this young-adult novel about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a recommended reading program for students in Grades 7 and 8 in public schools. Complainants described the novel as anti-Israeli propaganda. The complaints provoked a public controversy. Sheila Ward, a trustee on the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), said that she would “move heaven and earth to have The Shepherd’s Granddaughter taken off the school library shelves.” Carter and the novel’s publisher—Patsy Aldana of Groundwood Books—denied the charge of anti-Israeli bias. Erna Paris, chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada, and Aldana urged the TDSB to defend students’ freedom to read. In August 2010, Chris Spence, the TDSB’s director of education, decided to keep the novel in the schools’ recommended reading program.

Challenged in 2011 in Ontario for its use in Grade 12 English classes. Objections to sex and violence in the novel. After community response and textbook review, novel was kept in the secondary school curriculum.