Last Saturday was a lot. I taught a yoga class and dashed immediately after to a screening and panel discussion of the documentary Library, then home to shower and change for a black tie event. There was no time to eat in this flurry of activity. Under normal circumstances I would have been famished and greedily reached for the one-bite appetizers floating by in abundance. The Librarians!
The Librarians (2025) is a documentary directed by Kim A. Snyder that follows school and public librarians on the frontlines of defending intellectual freedom against rising, organized book bans and censorship across the U.S
It’s one thing to read the words used in the drive to remove books from school bookshelves, but to watch the fevered pitch used to deem books pornographic and call out librarians as “groomers” is chilling. This is real, and this is happening. Librarians are trained and study which books are appropriate for which age groups. A six-year-old is not going to encounter a collection of books with materials inappropriate for their age group. Are there books not appropriate for a six-year-old? Yes. Are they in school libraries? Most likely not.
The documentary highlighted cases of librarians being prosecuted as purveyors of pornography and groomers. The trailer gave me pause; the documentary froze me. The United States has a literacy rate of 79%, and 54% of adults in the U.S. read below the fifth-grade level. The U.S. is ranked 39th globally for literacy. Now, in my mind, perhaps the greater concern should be the ability to read. But I digress.
There was hope in the film. The librarians were the heroes, yes. Even more meaningful was Courtney Gore.1 For the first half of the film, I cringed when she came on screen. She ran for her local school board on a campaign claiming that children were being indoctrinated, pornography was being distributed, and children were being groomed. Once elected, she was anxious to investigate these cases. What she found was nothing. After finding no evidence, she disavowed her platform; the material said to be dangerous actually taught children how to be a good person and a good friend. Her honesty was not received well. For me, her willingness to stand up was everything.
The usual suspects—Florida and Texas—lead the ban on books, but Massachusetts is number 4 in the country for challe. The banning of books is not occurring in isolation, but is a concerted effort to erase history and vilify groups. The 1619 Project is banned in 14 states. This book, among many things, describes how Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany used the U.S. eugenics movement and Jim Crow laws as their foundation.
“But it’s just one book out of all these books—no one will miss it.” That was expressed by the book banners. When I was 7 years old, my mom was in the hospital. My dad would tell the story of me sitting with a bowl of water and a brush, trying to do my hair. He wanted to help but wasn’t sure what to do, as I fought a hard battle to get my strands to submit. It crushed me to learn that the book Hair Love was banned.
Hair Love is an Academy Award-winning 2019 animated short film and children’s book created by Matthew A. Cherry. It tells the heartwarming story of an African American father, Stephen, learning to style his young daughter Zuri’s thick, kinky hair for the first time while her mother is away
WHY? Opponents claimed the book was “divisive” and part of “critical race theory.” The short film is 6 minutes; the book is s 5 minute read. This would have meant everything to me. What is one book? One book makes a difference—like an afternoon with friends, that smile and encouragement when you need it most.
Has anyone ever said, “That book scarred me for life?” While library collections are designed to be age-appropriate, I remember two specific books from my dad’s collection growing up: The Prophet and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. As a ten-year-old, I had the skill to read them, but neither sparked my interest.
Back in the ’60s, books like The Grapes of Wrath and The Catcher in the Rye weren’t necessarily banned, but they did raise concerns due to their profanity. The surge in challenges we see today began in 2020, but the landscape has changed; rather than individual parents, these efforts are now often funded by large organizations.
“A Books Unbanned library card gives teens across the United States free digital access to ebooks and digital resources, including banned and challenged books—no matter where they live. Books Unbanned helps ensure teens can read what they like, explore new ideas and form their own opinions. This is a free digital library card for teens, created to protect the freedom to read in the face of growing book censorship.”
My parents were both born in the 1920s and my grandparents in the late 1800’s. What an expanse of time. With a mother who was an avid reader and a father who majored in English, I am thankful I grew up surrounded by books. That environment left me fascinated by libraries and gave me a lifelong appreciation for reading. This week, I invite you to consider: is there a book that truly made a difference in your life?
1 From the Utah Review
For this particular thematic angle, the story of Courtney Gore is illuminating. Once the co-host of a right-wing talk show, she was elected to the Granbury, Texas school board on a platform of challenging curriculum she believed purposefully indoctrinated children. After being elected, she found no evidence while reviewing the district curriculum that it was steeped in purposes of indoctrination. Believing that her colleagues on the school board, with whom she had shared political sentiments, would reconsider their critiques, they instead dismissed her revelations.
As a 2024 Texas Tribune report, published in conjunction with ProPublica, indicated, now convinced that her colleagues had no intention of public education reform because they were more interested in flooding the channels with mistrust, Gore took to social media. She wrote, “I’m over the political agenda, hypocrisy bs … I took part in it myself. I refuse to participate in it any longer. It’s not serving our party. We have to do better.” The point of her message is reiterated in the film. Are there more like Courtney Gore out there?
Balancing on Unstable Surfaces 