THE LIEBRARY

Facts are facts…except when they’re not.

When siblings Mikayla and Drew head off to their local ’brary to find some books, the “facts” presented seem unusual: Trees eat squirrels, lava is really cheese, and volcanoes are in fact massive fondue pots. Their father seems skeptical, “But if it’s in a book, if it’s something you read… / then maybe it means that it has to be true.” Taking advice from similarly styled books, the father employs some questionable parenting habits, like feeding the kids candy and ice cream for breakfast and trying to teach 6-year-old Mikayla to drive. Eventually, the family realizes that the books they borrowed were from a “lie-brary” and that “we can’t believe everything that we read.” Cultivating healthy skepticism can be a good thing, but the messaging is off-kilter. Library workers strive to ensure that their books are up to date and don’t contain erroneous information. The American Library Association even offers free webinars to help train the public to stop fake news, so the depiction of the “Liebrarian” as gleefully scheming in the background paints an inaccurate, potentially harmful picture. In a world where many struggle with the difference between facts and propaganda, this book sends a disturbing message of distrust. Backmatter discussing the difference between the real and the imagined would have been helpful but was not included. In the loose-lined illustrations, both the family and the Liebrarian are light-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

We cannot tell a lie: This is an alarming misrepresentation of libraries.