The State of Things

It comes as no surprise to me that a rise in book banning correlates to loss of literacy and reading skills. We can expect the hand wringing to continue as states pass laws and create policies that limit access to books and other media. 

According to PEN America there were 6870 book bans in the United States during the 2024-25 school year. Ninety-two percent of the challenges came from organized groups, or from the government. One of the reasons that the number of challenges has gone up exponentially in the last five years is that groups such as Moms for Liberty are challenging entire categories of books, whereas before 2020 most challenges came from individual parents concerned about what their own child was reading. 

Following is a partial list of what states are doing (or not) to protect our right to read. Be aware that in every state and territory in the US there are people and organizations fighting for everyone's right to read and access information, just as there are people and organizations in every state working to restrict access. 

Alabama's ban on LGBTQ and "sexually explicit" books in youth sections of public libraries has resulted in the loss of funding for at least one library which refused to move children's books into the adult section of the library.  

Arkansas is enforcing a vague book banning law that calls for criminal penalites for educators, librarians, booksellers, and potentially individual citizens, who provide materials that are deemed "harmful" to minors. The law does not specify or define which books are harmful.

Florida leads the country in number of book bans and continues to search for ways to keep its lead. Recently the Commissioner or Education told educators to "weed on purpose" to look for and remove any books that might be controversial.

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry recently introduced an online form to facilitate Louisianans' ability to turn in librarians and other educators who make available LGBTQ content, under the guise of "protecting minors".

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healy signed the Freedom to Read Act in August ensuring access to diverse stories and viewpoints in schools and libraries throughout the Commonwealth. States that have similar laws include Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Maryland, California, Delaware, Colorado, and Oregon.

Michigan The State Library Association and the ACLU have partnered to create a digital Hostile Territory Map "document[ing] book challenges and other government actions affecting First Amendment...rights in Michigan schools and public libraries".

Missouri ACLU successfully argued to block a vague book banning law that would have put teachers, librarians, and potentially even citizens at risk of being arrested for providing "harmful" materials to minors.

New York Brooklyn Public Library created Books Unbanned which provides free e-cards to teens and young adults anywhere in the country so they can access BPL's digital collection.

Ohio As school vouchers fund more private schools, public school libraries in Ohio are looking at funding cuts that could eliminate some school libraries completely.

Tennessee Rutherford County Library System is facing a wrongful termination lawsuit for firing their Library Director who refused to move 132 children's books to the adult section of the library.

Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick's call to remove over 2,000 titles of "dirty, filthy and vulgar books" from school libraries included two holocaust memoirs Night by Elie Wiesel and The Diary of Anne Frank among other books about the holocaust as well as books by and about marginalized communities including the LGBTQ community. He has since walked back the call to remove books about the holocaust, but otherwise plans to 'come for the books'.

Utah  A state law calls for removal of any book that has been challenged in at least three public school districts. Since the start of the school year eight titles have been banned statewide for a total of forty-four banned books. 

When I talk about book banning and censorship to groups I tell them not to concern themselves with whether or not their local library has books that offend them. It does. Rather, I suggest that they check to see if the library has materials that support their interests and viewpoints. Just as libraries should have something to offend everyone, they should also have something that appeals to everyone. I also try to make clear that while the current crisis in book banning is driven by the right, the left can take their part of the blame as well. I hear the same language used on both sides and the same tactics. Books can be "harmful" and we must protect children from them. Reading passages out of context is another game both sides will play.

The chilling effects of censorship can be seen from both sides as well. Self censorship on the part of authors who will not write books that might be offensive to someone, publishers that will not publish books that they don't believe will sell, libraries that will not purchase them, and booksellers that will not carry them means that everyone loses.

People should be trusted to make their own reading choices. The Freedom to Read Statement, adopted by the ALA in 1953 is just as essential today as it was then.

I recommend following BookRiot, PEN America, The Freedom to Read Project, Everylibrary, and the American Library Association to keep abreast of book bans and challenges, along with other book and library related news.

The Cartographers - by Peng Shepherd

This supernatural story about the Map Division at the New York Public Library was a natural choice for this librarian to read aloud to her geographer husband. The book was recommended to us by one of our friends.

While we are hardly experts, we do know a bit more than your average Joe about maps and mapmaking, so we were familiar with the concept of a phantom settlement - a place on a map that doesn't exist in real life. Mapmakers of yore sometimes included these "paper towns" in order to catch copyright infringers. 

But what if the phantom settlements were real, if only a person had the right map that could lead them there? Some spunky graduate students (aka "The Cartographers)" discover just such a place on a decades-old gas station highway map. Nell Young discovers a rare copy of the map after her father dies in his office at the New York Public Library. Her investigation into his death leads her to some impossible places!

While the Map Division of the NYPL is at the center of this mystery, there are other libraries in this work as well: 

• Nell reads her mother's obituary using old library microfilm machines.
• A robbery at a high school in Scranton, Pennsylvania left an employee with a broken leg and the geography section in shambles. 
• The Cartographers, doing some research through newspapers stories in the Rockland (NY) Public Library, learn of a string of robberies nationwide in libraries, schools, gas stations, museums, and even private homes. They suspect that someone is hunting down copies of what they call the "Agloe map".

A fun summer read.

The Adjunct - by Maria Adelmann

This dark satire about the Academy's gig economy tells the story of Samantha, a PhD living in Baltimore, Maryland (my home town) trying to teach enough classes at two different colleges to keep the wolves at bay. Sam's plight, and that of her fellow adjuncts, is becoming more common as colleges and universities eschew hiring tenure track faculty and rely more on part-time contract faculty. As my husband (James) and I listened to the audiobook we reflected on our own times working as adjunct faculty. While we would never suggest that we were paid well for the work, for us it was never about survival. My contract teaching work was done at a time when a part-time job was exactly what I needed while I was the primary caregiver for our young child. James' part-time teaching was done while he was finishing his PhD and he had a full-time job in IT. He took evening teaching jobs so as to have recent teaching experience when he started looking for a tenure track job. We were lucky. Many of our colleagues had no health insurance, no spouse's salary to fall back on, and no guarantee that they would even have jobs at the end of any given semester.

As a "campus novel" libraries are sprinkled throughout the work providing insight into their myriad uses, including as a student job, a meeting place, and a space for study. Sam also borrows a Chromebook from the Baltimore Public Library because although her department expects her to have one, they do not provide her with one. 

There is a lot of "meta" in this work, including a meta librarian. Sam is an aspiring writer and describes a romance she wrote in which a librarian (who doesn't like romance novels) befriends her stalker, unaware that he is stalking her. Once they develop a relationship he loses interest, and she begins to take an interest in romances.

Of course I always like reading about a library in any book, but it is especially fun when one I've actually been to is mentioned. In this book the Enoch Pratt Free Library was given a shout out.

Mennonite Valley Girl - by Carla Funk

This memoir, written as a collection of essays, details Funk's upbringing in the Mennonite Community of Vanderhoof, British Columbia in the 1980s and 90s.

In the chapter called "The Changeroom" Funk describes the cringey awkwardness of her mother and older girl cousins trying to explain puberty to her in a world where euphemisms around body parts and bodily functions abound. In universal adolescent fashion a young Funk rolls her eyes at her mother and declares that she probably knows more than her mother, having read the "secret book" in the library of the Christian school she attended, that explained how the human body worked - including a "single page dedicated to reproduction". She and her friend attempted to sound out words that they'd never heard before and Funk confidently proclaims that "it rhymes with tennis" only to learn in a rather humiliating manner that penis has a long "e" sound. They didn't dare to ask any adults the correct pronunciation of any of the words because they (the adults) couldn't possibly be aware that the school's four-shelf library "contained a book with such forbidden language".

The Lost Library by Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass

Mysteries are among my least favorite genres. People love to recommend mystery novels to me though because, apparently, a lot of fictional librarians love to solve mysteries. The Lost Library is a light mystery chapter book that I did enjoy. There was no murder (although there were some friendly ghosts).

The book is told from several points of view:

• Mortimer - a cat (also known as Goldie, Sunshine, Buffy, and Dear Cat)
• Evan - a fifth grader who is a bit worried about going to middle school next year
• Al - Assistant Librarian at the History House

The town of Martinville has been without a public library ever since a fire burned theirs down twenty years ago. When Al decides to install a Little Free Library on the town common Evan is intrigued by that fact that almost all of the books in it were checked in to the town library on the date of the fire. He is especially interested to discover the name of famous mystery author (H.G. Higgins) written on one of the checkout cards. He is determined to find out where the books came from, and if Higgins ever lived in Martinville.

Something I do like to see in books is a bit of metafiction. One of the first books Evan takes out of the Little Free Library is How to Write a Mystery Novel. Rather than penning his own book though, Evan uses the suggestions for writing a novel in order to solve a mystery.

Now that I have finished with the book (and my blog post) I will place this in one of the dozen Little Free Libraries in my own town for someone else to discover.

The Library of Lost Dollhouses - by Elise Hooper

Along with being unprepared for a test, and being naked in public, one of my recurring dreams is that of finding a secret room in my house. 

Hooper's book asks us to imagine finding a secret room in a library that holds secret dollhouses, each of which holds its own secrets. 

There are two timelines in this story: World War I Europe, and present day San Francisco. When Tildy Barrows, curator at Belva Curtis LeFarge Library and Museum, discovers a hidden room in the museum with two exceptionally decorated dollhouses created by artist Cora Hale it takes her on an unexpected journey that intersects with her own family history. 

The museum, along with its eccentric founder is loosely based on Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Just as Gardner left instructions to keep her art collection exactly as she left it, LeFarge likewise "left very strict provisions for how...the library was to be managed". Barrows is sure that this does NOT include digitizing the book collection to make room for more art. 

It turns out that Barrows was right. In fact LeFarge once insisted that raising a child in the Library was an exceptionally good idea. 

Libraries are the prefect place to grow up. Just think how smart she'll be.

Furthermore, the McCarthy-era heiress had this to say about a child being trouble in a library 

Any trouble a young person can find in a library is the best kind of trouble

And Hale, who knew LeFarge quite well, had this to say about libraries

Libraries are viewed as such solemn places-but why? Reading is magic. Think of the imagination and sense of adventure that readers employ every thine they crack open a book. There are few places filled with more magic than libraries, no about about it.

I am not sure what psychologists say about what the "secret room" dream means. I have always interpreted it to mean that I am not meeting my potential. But perhaps the dream is about revealing something I have kept hidden.  Just as every book has as many interpretations as there are readers, dreams are multi-layered and can mean different things to different dreamers. I think will need to think about my hidden room dreams a bit more.

Wake Now in the Fire - by Jarrett Dapier & AJ Dungo

This very recently published graphic novel is a fictionalized account of real events. In 2013 Chicago Public School (CPS) removed all copies of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis from classrooms. Once administrators determined that they didn't want the book to be used as part of the curriculum it was removed from classrooms, even as classes were being conducted. (A very similar situation occurred in the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) around the same time.) The predictable refrain of "we're not banning books" from CPS Administration was evident. The CEO (yes CEO!) of the Chicago Public Schools at the time Barbara Byrd-Bennett claimed to know nothing about the removal of the books, and insisted that CPS is "not in the business of censorship". Turns out she was lying on both counts. Moreover, in 2015 Byrd-Bennett was convicted on bribery charges and spent time in federal prison.

Teachers, librarians, and students worked together to ensure that the book remained in the library, even as it was removed from classrooms. However, CPS was also working at the time to shut down most of the school libraries in the district.

The book doesn't shy away from an explanation that book banners come in both the red and blue variety. A student asks how such a thing can happen in bright blue Chicago. His teacher responds

Censorship is, unfortunately, something humans do. Humans in communist dictatorships, humans in right-wing theocracies, humans in red towns, blue towns...It's an instinct we seem to have for different reasons. 

A graphic novel about the banning of a graphic novel. I do like things that are meta. 

And I don't expect we will have to wait long before the book banners start challenging this one, too.