【Mike Horner Archives】

Imagine how America would react if Australia was mean to the late Maurice Sendak or Mike Horner Archiveseven Eric Carle, author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

That's how the latter feels now, after hearing that beloved children's book author Mem Fox was left in tears after being detained for hours at Los Angeles Airport and accused of having the wrong visa in early February.

SEE ALSO: YouTube livestream of pregnant giraffe briefly pulled for nudity and sexually explicit content

Author of such subversive texts as Possum Magicand Ten Little Fingers, Fox told the Advertiserthe experience was traumatic and humiliating.

"The way I was treated would have made any decent American shocked to the core, because that's not America as a whole, it really isn't," she said. "It's just that people have been given permission to let rip in a fashion that is alarming."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Fox, who claims she had a valid visa, has reportedly received a written apology from the United States embassy in Canberra. The Embassy and U.S. Customs and Border Protection have been contacted for comment.

Mashable Trend Report Decode what’s viral, what’s next, and what it all means. Sign up for Mashable’s weekly Trend Report newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

She told the outlet she was aggressively questioned, and suggested President Donald Trump has created an atmosphere in the U.S. that makes such behaviour acceptable. Fox now doubts she'll ever return.

"I am old and white, innocent and educated, and I speak English fluently," she added. "Imagine what happened to the others in the room, including an old Iranian woman in her 80s, in a wheelchair."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

On The ProjectTuesday, she went into more detail about her "awful" experience.

"The treatment of people in that room while I was there, which I observed, made me ashamed to be a human being," she said.

Really America? The woman literally wrote a book about magic possums called little Hush and Grandma Poss -- there's nothing nicer than that. Naturally, Australian Twitter reacted with outrage, and plenty of jokes about the location of known trouble maker, "the green sheep."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

UPDATE: March 1, 2017, 10:25 a.m. AEDT Tweet added fromThe Project.

---

Featured Video For You

---

Roads made from recycled plastic are paving the way to a greener tomorrow

---

(Editor: {typename type="name"/})