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.

That Book is Dangerous! How Moral Panic, Social Media, and the Culture Wars Are Remaking Publishing - by Adam Szetela

When I was in high school, back in the 1980s, we were required to take a civics class. In addition to learning about the three branches of government, and checks and balances, and how the electoral college functioned, we also learned a theory of politics that, rather than seeing Democrats and Republicans on a linear spectrum (that stretched from left to right) put them on a loop continuum, that eventually would meet. 

I thought about this lesson a few years later when I was in college and learned about Andrea Dworkin, a radical feminist who, along with Catherine MacKinnon, fought against pornography. The two made strange bedfellows to right-wing Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell. All were active in an a lobbying effort to censor pornography in the 1980s.

More recently, attempts to ban Harry Potter books also demonstrate how the right and left mirror each other. While conservative Christians (literally) burn the books because they see them as espousing witchcraft, crusaders on the left likewise throw the works into the fire because of author J.K. Rowling's anti-trans views.

Szetela's book is unusual in that its focus is on how the left is censoring books. While I see a lot of news articles and reports about the crisis in book banning in schools and public libraries, these are almost exclusively about threats from the right (from groups such as Moms for Liberty, and No Left Turn in Education). To be sure these are real and serious threats that seek to remove books written by authors with BIPOC, LGBTQ+, or other historically underrepresented identities. Books that feature characters from marginalized communities are also often targets.

With the exception of PEN America almost no one is reporting on how the left is censoring materials. In some ways the methods are the same as those from the Moms for Liberty crowd. We see in both camps: 

• Paternalistic condescension: insisting on "protecting" children (and adults) from "harmful" books
• Not actually reading the books they want banned
• Calling for physical violence (including issuing death threats) against the authors and their publishers 
• Insisting that what they are doing isn't censorship because if people want to read the books that have been removed from the library they can simply buy them

Attacks from the left, however, may not get the same press as those from the right because some of their tactics are a bit more stealthy. Rather than challenging books that have been published, and are already on library shelves, what we see on the left is the use of social media to prevent books that don't adhere to very narrow guidelines (of what might be considered inoffensive) from being published in the first place. Online book reviews, many (most) of which are written by people who never read the book are shared by an increasingly large community. It is ironic, but not surprising, that it is often authors with the same marginalized identities that the right targets who are targeted by the left in these cases. Likewise, some of the mob have thrown stones only to find that they are living in glass houses themselves.

One of the things Szetela writes about that I found particularly curious is the proliferation of sensitivity readers. While those of us in academia are (fairly) admonished not to ask people with marginalized identities to be spokespeople for all in their communities, sensitivity readers have created a rather lucrative business marketing themselves to do just that. This has gone so far that "...even sensitivity readers have their work read by sensitivity readers".

I want to be clear that I absolutely agree that there is a need for more diverse books (for readers of all ages). I do not believe that any one person (or group) should be the arbiter of what should be published, or be found on library shelves. Every reader will bring a different interpretation to a particular book based on their own experiences. It is not for anyone else to determine how any book speaks to another reader. Additionally, books roles as "windows and mirrors" are part of their appeal to me. But not all books need to reflect my experiences, nor do they necessarily need to have a moral lesson, nor develop empathy. Some books are thought provoking, others are just fun, or silly, or simple escape. 

It may be time for all to revisit the Freedom to Read Statement adopted by the American Library Association in 1953 which, in addition to other things, reminds us that books should not be censored for author viewpoint, and that readers should be trusted to make their own choices (emphasis mine). 

Readers of this post can be assured that I did indeed read Szetela's whole book before writing my review!

The Dissidents Podcast: Don't Get on the Banned Wagon

Posting my recent podcast for Banned Books Week. Ironically, the hosting organization (the Institute for Liberal Values) received an email suggesting that I be dropped from the speaker list for repeating the trope that JK Rowling is transphobic". It is not what I said, and even if I had suggesting that I be banned is completely antithetical to the message of the podcast.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dissidents/id1537516628

Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books - by Kirsten Miller

Lula Dean didn't intend for the Little Library she put in her front yard to be filled with books she had requested be removed from the school and public libraries, but some stealthy young folks replaced her "clean" books with the forbidden ones, hiding them with the covers of the books she originally had in her collection. Suddenly kids know about periods, and women know about witchcraft, and some people even want to remove the statue of a slave owner from the town square. 

Burning books is offered as a solution for those works that some don't want others to read. This is the case for people on the left and the right. Lula Dean and the Concerned Parents Committee (CPC) suggest this for the books they want "reconsidered". Likewise Delvin Crump decides to burn Our Confederate Heroes when he finds it in Lula Dean's library. 

Not once in his life had Delvin Crump ever contemplated burning a book. When he'd joined the army, he had taken an oath to defend the Constitution which gave all Americans the right to free speech, including the backward-ass bastard who'd written Our Confederate Heroes. But it was time to take this piece of shit out of circulation. 

Delvin has his grill fired up when he discovers that Toni Morrison's Beloved is really inside the book cover.

Don't burn books you don't like. You cannot determine for other people what they can read. People have the right to read what books they want, and have their own reasons for reading them. 

This book has 35 chapters, each named for a book. Additionally, a number of books are mentioned in the work but do not have chapters named for them. In her author's note Miller tells the readers that some of the book titles she uses are real, and others are fictitious. I did recognize many of the book titles. Some, such as: Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret; The Handmaid's Tale; and Fifty Shades of Grey have their own posts on this blog. I was particularly interested to find How the Word is Passed among those titles used. It is a book I am currently listening to on Audible.

The town librarian Mara Ocumma is a true defender of privacy and of free speech. When Melody Sykes, one of the members of the CPC shows up at the library looking a book of poison mushrooms, Ocumma knows exactly why. Melody's nasty husband Randy is certainly worthy of a murder fantasy. However unlikeable Melody is, though, she still is entitled to good information and privacy, and Ocumma ensures she gets both.

A fun satire. 
 

Ban This Book - by Alan Gratz

 When Amy Anne learns that her favorite book, From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, along with a host of other works, has been removed from her school library she and her friends start the BBLL (Banned Books Locker Library) so that they can share the books with classmates who want to read them. As the book bans continue, and their beloved school librarian Mrs. Jones is replaced by a "shushing" imposter, they decide to fill out reconsideration requests for ALL the books in the library as a form of civil disobedience. They have no problem coming up with a reason for each book, from witchcraft to sexual content to violence to "it might confuse children", or in the case of a book of riddles, it might make kids feel bad if they can't figure out the answer. Never mind that it might make them feel good if they CAN figure it out.

Amy Anne is surprised to learn that there is a field of study called "library science" and enlists the help of Mrs. Jones to set up the BBLL. Mrs. Jones provides Amy Anne with some old equipment including a date stamp card. Once Amy has this she feels like a real librarian and only needed "a pair of glasses on a chain" to be ready for her "official librarian membership card."

One of the banned books is Judy Blume's classic work Are You There God? It's Me Margaret. Mrs. Jones explains that back in the day when due date stamps were used that libraries also used cards and pockets to keep track of who had checked out the books. She shows Amy Anne some old books that still have the cards and pockets. It is here that she learns that the parent behind most of the challenges (Mrs. Spencer) checked out Blume's work multiple times when she was a student at Shelbourne Elementary. Amy Anne "outs" Mrs. Spencer, which, let's face it, she kind of deserved. However, Mrs. Jones does take the opportunity to explain to Amy Anne about patron privacy.

On Censorship: A Public Librarian Examines Cancel Culture - by James LaRue

 

I've been invited several times as a guest speaker on "The Dissidents" podcast. During the month of September, as a lead up to Banned Books Week (September 22-28) one of the hosts (Elizabeth) and I read LaRue's book and recorded four half-hour(ish) conversations about it. Last night, as a finale, we invited the author to speak with us about his work on a livecast. It was a fun (and hopeful) conversation.

Listen to all of our conversations:

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

Episode 5

That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America - by Amanda Jones

 

I first heard of Amanda Jones last fall when I attended an online workshop about banned books. Jones was one of the speakers and described being targeted by a radical a right-wing group for comments she made at a local public library board meeting. 

Jones was an award-winning school librarian who was celebrated in her home town of Watson, Lousiana where she still lived, and worked as a middle school librarian. When she learned that "book content" was on the Board agenda in in the summer of July 2022 she went to speak as a citizen against book banning and censorship. And although dozens of other citizens also spoke out against book bans and censorship, Jones was the only one who was harassed. The trolls made up, and repeated, lies about her calling her a pedophile and "groomer", and indicating that she advocated teaching anal sex to middle school children.

There were two things Jones said about book banning that I disagree with (but promise not to personally attack her for them). One is that "all book banners seem to be Republican...". While I agree that the current wave of book banners have a decidedly right-wing bent, it is absolutely true that book banners come in all all political stripes. One example of a "liberal" challenge is described in this article from the New York Times. It also appears to be the case that left-wing warriors have been successful in preemptively censoring work, as we saw with Jack Gantos' A Suicide Bomber Sits in a Library. 

Jones also, incorrectly asserts that "Librarians do not purchase pornography" Well, yes, they do. And while you probably won't find "issues of Playboy next to Time magazine" in your local public library, some libraries, do indeed carry Playboy. A quick search of the WorldCat database tells me, for instance, that I can see it at the Boston Public Library (among others).

Overall, Jones' work is heartfelt and introspective. She is honest about her questioning of the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. She loved them as a child, but re-reading them in the twenty-first century cast a new light on them.

My realization was a bitter pill to swallow because of how much I loved the books as a child. But the books are not what I thought they were as a child. Strip away my nostagia, and I knew the books could be harmful. Is it censorship if I take them off the shelf though?

Her decision to remove the books from her library was ultimately based on the collection development policy (which is what should always be used) which indicated that books that haven't circulated in five years be weeded from the collection. "The kids just weren't interested in them anymore, and I needed the shelf space for books that they kids would check out".

Jones also rightly points out that kids are not going to the library to look for porn, when they "have full access to the internet in the palm of their hand" and that politicians who are pandering to a hate-filled base to attack libraries and librarians are ignoring spaces where real sexual abuse is taking place, often in religious spaces.

Jones spoke with John Chrastka from EveryLibrary about her book. You can find the interview here.

Jones' homepage can be found here. 

Banned Books Week runs from September 22 to September 28, 2024.

Trouble in Censorville: The Far-Right's Assault on Public Education and the Teachers who are Fighting Back - edited by Nadine M. Kalin and Rebekah Modrak

 

It should come as no surprise to anyone following the news, be it local or national, that book challenges are on the rise. According to PEN America there have been over 10,000 book bans in public schools in the last year.  

This book is a collection of essays by teachers and librarians across the country who have been targeted and harassed for having a diverse collection of books in their classrooms and libraries. 

I would recommend to those who are interested in this topic not to read the book in its entirety, cover to cover, over a short period of time, as I did. The tone weighed on me, even though I knew what to expect.

There is also a certain same-ness to these stories (even as each is unique), which again may weigh on the reader. It is important to note, however, that the same-ness is due to the fact that those who are attacking the educators are all using the same playbook, and attacking the same books. Allegations of pornography in the children's section and grooming young children are de riguer from those who purport to protect children.

At least two of the essays in this work were written by the same librarians I read about in The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians. Notably included in both are Martha Hickson (school librarian in New Jersey) and Carolyn Foote (retired school librarian in Austin, Texas). The tone of the two works couldn't be more different, however. Overall, Secret Lives is light, whereas this one is heavy. Secret Lives is a celebration of books and reading. Censorville is a call to arms and indeed includes a list of things we can do to "resist attacks on public education". 

More information about this work, the educators who are profiled, and and additional links to more resources can be found at Censorville.com.

EveryLibrary sponsored a panel discussion with Kalin and Modrak along with some of the authors from this work which can be found online here.

Banned Books Week 2024 runs from September 22-September 28. 

The Dragon in the Library - by Louie Stowell

Every library has a dragon sleeping underneath it. The dragon needs stories and quiet to keep it asleep lest it awaken and wreak havoc upon the world. It is also true that all librarians are wizards and are in charge of keeping the dragon in its dream state.

Young Kit discovers that she is a wizard when she meets Faith Braithwaite, Head Librarian of the Chatsworth Library "a boring-looking concrete building with automatic doors that didn't work right..."

I had some concerns with some of the things in this book:

In one passage Faith tells Kit and her friends that there are certain books that they keep away from the general public "because they're dangerous...[they] have power even if you're not a wizard". She goes on to explain that they can change you into a marshmallow if you're not careful, but frankly it just sounds like good old censorship to me. Dangerous books indeed!

In another Faith asks Kit and her friends to help shelve some books: 

"You just need to match the number on the spine to the number on one of the shelves. There's a list of where you'll find each number, but I'm sure you'll get the hang of it quickly". Right, because everyone knows that there is no reason to train people who work in libraries how to properly shelve books. Sheesh.

Faith also asks Kit to do story time, even though Kit doesn't like to read out loud. Kit in fact does a crappy job of it. Well, she just needs to practice. Story time takes more preparation than simply picking up a book and reading it to a group of kids. It's takes planning. At the very least we'd expect that the person conducting the story time had read the book at least one time before! 

Librarians may not be wizards, but we are trained professionals.

One of the sixty books about dragons I'm reading for the year of the dragon in which I turned sixty.

The Chaperone - by M Hendrix

 

In the tradition of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale Hendrix creates a New America, one in which women are second class citizens and all teenage girls are required to have a chaperone when they go out in public. Chaperone's are exclusively other women who have decided to take one of the few jobs available to them.

Stella's Chaperone (Sister Laura) is not averse to bending the rules for her charge. Sister Laura sometimes disappears when she and Stella are at the library so that Stella can steal a few moments with her crush, Mateo.

It is intriguing that there even is a public library in New America. But of course there are also a lot of forbidden books. Sister Laura passes some of this literature along to Stella, helpfully suggesting that she hide the taboo works between the covers of some of the other books in her room.

It appears a revolution is afoot!

A Suicide Bomber Sits in the Library - by Jack Gantos

 

I first learned of this "unpublished" work when I read the Booklash Report from PEN America which describes several cases of pre-emptive censorship (in which authors either change, or pull, their works before publication in response to public accusations of harm. 

When criticism of a book veers into accusations of harm, authors may feel compelled to respond to their audiences in real time—typically through social media. In some cases, this means fact-checking details that have been lost or misrepresented in the social media uproar. In 2018, for example, Dave McKean, the illustrator of the controversial children’s graphic novel A Suicide Bomber Sits in a Library, tweeted to clarify that the book’s Muslim protagonist was not in fact illiterate—a sticking point in a since-deleted, viral tweet posted by comics publisher Zainab Akhtar.

It turns out that the book never got published anyway, over charges that it was "Islamophobic". But then, I discovered that the "unpublished" work had actually been published as part of an anthology (Here I Stand edited by Amnesty International) in 2016. An interlibrary loan request brought this work to me so I could read the story for myself. 

The short story does not include McKean's illustrations (which would have appeared in the graphic novel). I think it is clear, however that the protagonist is illiterate. We see this in the very first paragraph. 

He has been told to fear nothing and that he will be perfectly safe in the library. Not even the secret police will think to look for him there, since he cannot read.

There is no indication in the rest of the story that the boy knew how to read.  

While sitting in the library the boy watches as others select and enjoy books, and begins to wonder what he is missing.

The suicide bomber...wants to ask what happens next in the story but he has been instructed to remain silent because books will master him just as they have mastered his enemies. He has been taught that books create a false life in a godless world that should not exist. Books cannot be trusted when only God has the key to paradise.

Well, this certainly reminds me of current events - censoring a book about censorship. 

Those on the left who would censor books do not like to be compared to those on the right who do the same. It is difficult to see oneself reflected in an unflattering light. For another example of left censorship see this article from The New York Times.

I end my post with this quote from the book.

He walks away thinking of the faces of the readers in the library. They were not ruined. They were happy. They were safe. Whatever power lived within those books did not hurt them (emphasis mine). 

More information about the controversy can be found in this article from the Guardian. 

What I did over Banned Books Week

October 1-7 was Banned Books Week. In addition to reading a book about an attempted book banning (Answers in the Pages) I was busy educating my community about recent book banning efforts, as well as historical book bans. On Tuesday I began teaching a six-week session at Bridgewater State University's Senior College called Off the Shelves: A History of Book Banning. On Wednesday I led a discussion on campus about banned books with students, faculty, and staff in attendance. The highlight of my week was on Wednesday evening when I participated in a panel discussion at Bridgewater Public Library. The recording is available here:

Bridgewater Book Banning Forum 

It was also covered in the local newspaper.

Answers in the Pages - by David Levithan

Donovan Johnson's mother likes to read the end of books first, so she isn't surprised when she finishes the story. When she reads the last sentence of The Adventurers (the book assigned to her son's fifth grade class) she is sure the two main characters  (Rick and Oliver) are gay. The sentence reads:

At that moment Rick knew just how deeply he loved Oliver, and Oliver knew just how deeply he loved Rick, and the understanding of this moment would lead them to much of the happiness and adventure that came next.

Taking this single sentence out of context she begins calling other parents to express her concern. She takes Donovan's copy from him and issues a formal challenge to the book. All the students in Mr. Howe's class have to turn in their copies while a decision is being made. Fortunately Donovan had the forethought to check out the school library copy so he could finish the story for himself.

Donovan describes the scene in his classroom when the parents come to turn in their students' copies  of the book

There were other parents, like Mr. and Mrs. Fitzhugh (Allison's mom and dad) and Mrs. and Mrs. Pausacker (Kira's moms), who were explaining that they were not turning in their child's copy of the book, because they didn't believe that parents like my mom should have the power to choose what their own children read or didn't read.

Donovan uses the school library computer to send an email to the author of the book in the hope that the question of Rick and Oliver's sexuality will be settled. Donovan also lets the author know that the book would be on the agenda of an upcoming school board meeting.

There are three parallel stories being told in the book. In addition to Donovan's, we see some of Rick and Oliver's story in The Adventurers, and finally we see Roberto and Gideon, two fifth graders who discover their romantic attraction to each other without concern about what others are fighting about. 

The question of Rick and Oliver's romantic proclivities is never settled. And we are left with the question - Does it even really matter if Rick and Oliver are gay? 

  

Forever - by Judy Blume

 

Prior to the release of the much-awaited film version of Are You There God It's Me Margaret I watched the Judy Blume Forever documentary which featured interviews with the beloved author as well as many who grew up reading her books. In discussing the controversial Forever (who could forget Ralph?) one of the featured interviewees indicated that she realized re-reading the book as an adult that Michael really was a "dick". Gauntlet thrown. I had to read it again myself. I expect it has been over 40 years since I read it, but I know I read it several times as a teenager. My single Mom was cool about it and I didn't have to hide under the covers to read it. 

Reading it as an almost-sixty-year old it is clear that Michael is rather controlling, and the awkward sex scenes were definitely more cringe-worthy than I remembered. I laughed when I read the description of Katherine's mother as five foot six inches and 109 pounds and how concerned she was that her thighs were getting flabby. I also am five foot six, but I weigh twice that. Thankfully, I gave up worrying about flab ages ago. One thing I'd not remembered is that Katherine's mother is also a librarian. So there's that.

Gender Queer: A Memoir - by Maia Kobabe

Note: The author of this work uses gender neutral Spivak Pronouns.

Topping the list of banned and challenged books for 2022 Kobabe's graphic memoir explores how e discovered eir identity as a nonbinary person starting as a toddler.

Although a late bloomer as a reader, as a teenager Kobabe discovered queer books at the library and began to read voraciously. E describes a feeling "as if lightning was coming from the pages...Electricity flowing directly into my palms" when reading gay sex scenes in the Fake Series of books by Sanami Matoh; and the Last Herald Mage Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey.

Like Alison Bechdel (who also wrote a queer graphic memor - Fun Home) Kobabe worked in eir college library, where e came out as bi-sexual for the first time. The college library is also a space where e tries sexting for the first time. Libraries are safe spaces to try new things.

As a cartoonist Kobabe taught one-day comics workshops to junior high students at local public libraries. Keenly aware of the current political climate, e ultimately decides not to share eir pronouns, nor share that e is nonbinary with the students. E questions this decision and wonders if e is doing a disservice to them, especially as e recognizes how much it would have meant to em if e had had a nonbinary or trans teacher in junior high. The importance of representation is a crucial theme of this work, and is one of the reasons censors want to keep others from reading it.

By far my favorite part of the book is a scene in which Kobabe meets eir cousin's new baby for the first time. Cousin Josh, and his wife, Faith ask what the baby should call his grown nonbinary relative. Kobabe responds "I don't know a good gender-neutral term for 'aunt'...Can I be his librarian? Or cartoonist?"

Find out more about this book at its author from the New York Times.

Attack of the Black Rectangles - by A.S. King

When Mac and his friends are assigned to read Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic in their sixth-grade lit circle they are interested in the story about a young girl who time travels to a World War II concentration camp. They are taken aback when they discover that two pages of the copies they've been given by their teacher have redacted passages. Several words have been blacked out with ink. They set out to find out who defaced their books, and what they were trying to hide. Finding out the original text was accomplished by locating a copy at the local bookstore. They had first tried the local public library but all copies were checked out. 

Mac and his comrades discover that their own teacher was responsible for the censorship. They are rightly insulted when they find out that some adults were concerned that they would be made uncomfortable by the references to the main character's breasts and chest. They point out that the book makes clear the horrors of the Holocaust and if they are able to handle this information they can most certainly handle reading words describing body parts.

There is a lot to this rather short novel. It is a story not only of censorship, but also of empowerment, and child agency. Mac and his classmates stage a protest, and show up at the school board meeting with prepared speeches in order to make their case. When I became a parent I was often surprised when I read information describing what my toddler, or preschooler, or school aged child, or middle schooler wasn't able to understand and think that my child didn't seem confused by those things. I would often think back to my own childhood remembering what I did understand at those ages. Kids really are smarter (and more determined) then society gives them credit for.

A final lesson Mac learns is that people are multi-dimensional. While he disagrees with his teacher on many issues he also recognizes that she does have his interests at heart. He has the same realization about his classmate Aaron with whom he generally does not get along, but finds is an ally in the fight against censorship.

Although fiction, the book is based on a true event, and references the book banning cases from York, Pennsylvania in 2021.

My husband and I listened to this as an audiobook. Our next listen will be The Devil's Arithmetic!

The Dissidents podcast - The Librarians are Not Okay

Last month I was invited to The Dissidents podcast to talk about libraries, librarians, and banned books. Click on the image below to listen. 

 The interview is about one and a half hours long. The short version is: Treat librarians with respect and don't ban books.

Our Missing Hearts - by Celeste Ng

This dystopian novel, reminiscent of The Handmaid's Tale, gives us a glimpse of what happens when prejudices go unchecked. As we watch the far right cycle through villanzing every marginalized group, (landing most recently on the LGBTQ+ community) this work is prescient in more ways than one.

In Our Missing Hearts Anti-Asian sentiment is sanctioned by the government through PACT (the Preserving American Cultures and Traditions Act). PACT also encourages citizens to report their neighbors for un-American activities (broadly defined) and allows great leeway in banning books. Children are removed from their homes and permanently re-placed if their parents are deemed to be un-American. Current news from Florida and Texas regarding trans children echoes this story line. Ng's book centers on a mixed race family: Asian-American mother Margaret; Caucasian father (Ethan); and their son Bird (aka Noah).

When Margaret's little-known (and apolitical) book of poetry unwittingly becomes a symbol of a protest movement Margaret goes on the lam leaving Bird and Ethan behind in hopes of keeping father and son together even as she cannot be with them. When asked about Margaret's whereabouts Bird and Ethan always answer that they do not know, and that she is no longer a part of the family.

There is much in this book about libraries and censorship. Although libraries exist they are largely empty (of people and books). Described as a "ghost town" the public library is still a sanctuary for Bird (and his friend Sadie). The librarian helps Bird to find a book based on only a vague description. They use an old card catalog to find it but the book has been removed from the library. As was his mother’s poetry book - Our Missing Hearts. The librarian tells him “We don’t burn books here this is America…we pulp them. She says his mother’s book was probably turned into toilet paper and wiped someone’s butt a long time ago. Although they do not traffic much in books, the librarians are still connecting people and information. "The brain of a librarian is a capacious place." 

The public librarians are part of a subversive group that provides information to parents whose children have been “re-placed” - surreptitiously passing notes between the pages of interlibrary loan books. The librarians also hide Sadie away from her foster family as she tries to reunite with her parents. Train and bus schedule information is provided to Bird at the library. The librarian tells him that she is only letting him know how to find the information: what he does with it is his business. 

Likewise classrooms are described with empty bookshelves because “books are outdated the minute they're published”. However, students are informed by their teachers that books haven’t been banned, obviously, because that would contradict the first amendment. Rather, the books have been removed so as not to expose students to harmful ideas. This is eerily reminiscent of a viral video that recently made the rounds online of an empty school library in Florida.

Ethan shelves books in a Harvard University library. A PhD, he used to teach linguistics there, but lost the job over Margaret's "politics".  As a linguist, Ethan is especially interested in word derivations. He enjoys explaining where words come from (in multiple languages) to his son. The book included an explanation about the derivation of the word library coming from the word for tree bark, something I had never known before.

National Library Week - There's More to the Story

This year we’re going to party like it’s 1981! That’s because book banning has never been so popular. After Ronald Reagan was elected president we saw the rise of the Moral Majority headed by Jerry Falwell. Book banning, in order to protect children, became a popular pastime of the religious right. As a high school student I found the book banners laughably naïve. What on earth did they think they were protecting us from? 

I kicked off National Library Week a few days early this year by watching Judy Blume Forever, a new documentary available on Amazon Prime, over the weekend. I highly recommend this film for all. Fans will be thrilled with the way eighty-five year-old Blume is honored by young and old, authors, readers, and librarians alike. Those who are not already fans will surely want to find out more by reading some of her books. My almost-sixty-year-old husband has called her a “national treasure” now that he has not only seen the new film, but also listened to her most classic work Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret on audio, and watched her in some Zoom discussions during the pandemic. 

The American Library Association (ALA) declared April 24 as National Right to Read Day, so as a follow-up to the movie the ALA and Prime video sponsored a Zoom event featuring a panel discussion with Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok (directors and producers of Judy Blume Forever); Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada (ALA President); Suzanne Nossel (CEO at PEN America) and Pat R. Scales (author and retired librarian). The panel was moderated by Chris Finan (Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Censorship). Pardo and Wolchok discussed the villainizing of Blume and her books during the 1980s, explaining that they expected it to be a small part of the film, but that they had no idea what was still to come. In one segment of the film we see a clip of Blume on the television show Crossfire with Pat Buchanan. Buchanan, who has clearly not read her books, attacks Blume, repeating the same sentence from her book Deenie. Finan mentioned the segment during the panel discussion, letting audience members who might have been too young to remember Buchanan, that he was a “blockhead from the eighties”. I couldn’t have said it better myself!

Judy Blume shows off some books in her bookstore Books & Books in Key West, FL

One of the panelists mentioned fear as a parental motivation for the sudden rise in book challenges. As I said, even in the eighties the whole thing seemed rather simple-minded, but today when we know that children can find whatever they want on the internet, and as children deal with real issues such as gun violence, abject hunger, and church-sanctioned pedophilia, I can only see this new wave of book banning as a deflection. Parents cannot control what is available online, but they can try to control what books are in their public schools and libraries, no matter how futile it may be.

The theme of this year's Library Week is "There's More to the Story". And, in fact, I have a lot more to say. Listen to me on The Dissident's podcast talking about libraries, library work, and book banning for National Library Week. 

The Librarian of Auschwitz - by Antonio Iturbe

People like to share memes with me about book collecting and book hoarding. These are meant to be humorous, but I generally don't find them especially funny. I do have quite a few books in my house, but I do not let them take over. I often read books from the library and then return them, or when I buy them I have a "one in, one out" policy. Purged books go to free book shelves, or are donated to libraries. They are shared. Books are meant to be read and shared, not simply put on display. I thought a lot about all of this as I read The Librarian of Auschwitz. This novel is based on the real story of Dita Kraus who, along with her family was sent to the family camp at Auschwitz-Birknenau during the Holocaust. Although she was only 14 years old Dita was asked to be the clandestine librarian at the clandestine school run by fellow prisoner Fredy Hirsch. She took on the task although the punishment for keeping the books would surely have been death had she been discovered. The eight tattered books entrusted to Dita's care were shared among the classes at the school, and otherwise hidden beneath a floor board. All the books had value, even the Russian grammar book, written in Cyrillic which no one in the camp read.

Early in the book the forbidden works are described as dangerous although they do not have "a sharp point, a blade or heavy end". 

Throughout history all dictators, tyrants, and oppressors, whatever their ideology - whether Aryan, black, oriental, Arab, Slav or any other racial background; whether defenders of popular revolutions, or the privileges of upper classes, or God's mandate, or martial law - have had one thing in common: the vicious persecution of books. Books are extremely dangerous; they make people think.

Even among the prisoners there was concern about what was to be found in some of the books. Fredy Hirsch tried to warn Dita off reading The Good Soldier Svejk, telling her that it was "not appropriate for children, especially girls". To which our heroine responds "Do you honestly believe that after observing on a daily basis the dozens of people entering the gas chambers...[that] what I read in a novel might shock me?". The same book is demonized by some other prisoners, and again Dita puts them in their place.

Reading this in light of the unprecedented book-banning that we are seeing in the United States today makes it especially chilling. Concerns about what someone might find in a book seem rather ridiculous in a country where children are gunned down in their classrooms and by police. 

In addition to the eight books, the school also runs a "library on legs". Similar to the human books in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, people who have memorized stories share them verbally.

Before being sent to the Auschwitz Dita and her family were first sent to the ghetto in Terezín, a place with a library-on-wheels, a trolley pushed through the streets which was generally "warmly welcomed" although the "books were often stolen, and not always so they could be read. They were also used as toilet paper or as fuel for the stoves".

One of the books entrusted to Dita is H.G. Wells The Time Machine. Dita determines that Wells was right, time machines do exist, in the form of books. Furthermore, she realizes that books can take us "much farther than any pair of shoes".