It’s been a maddening year for librarians—and anyone committed to young people’s literacy—as censors continue to wage war on children’s lit. The good news? Those of us fighting the good fight aren’t alone. I was reminded of that fact this October when I saw The Librarians, a documentary directed by Kim A. Snyder that spotlights nine librarians working to protect young people’s right to read. Several have been fired for refusing to compromise their ethics. In addition to worrying about their livelihoods, many of these librarians fear for their very lives; they face verbal harassment and even death threats.
And yet they persist. More than that, they’re inspiring the next generation. The film follows several high school students at a public school in Granbury, Texas, who form a Banned Books Club and deliver impassioned speeches at school board meetings, noting that titles by queer authors and writers of color are being disproportionately targeted.
Middle and elementary school students are also affected by censorship; thankfully, authors are empowering children to speak up. In 2018, A.S. King learned that a teacher at her local elementary school had blacked out words pertaining to nudity and the female body in Jane Yolen’s The Devil’s Arithmetic. Incensed, King wrote the novel Attack of the Black Rectangles (published under the name Amy Sarig King), in which her sixth grade protagonists hold protests, write to Yolen, and attend school board meetings to defend their intellectual freedom. King concludes with an author’s note urging young people to follow suit; she includes resources from PEN America and the National Coalition Against Censorship so her readers can fight back, too.
While preschoolers and early elementary school students may not be holding rallies or lobbying their school boards, they’re old enough to understand that they have the right to read, and I’m glad to see more picture books illuminating the issue. Rob Sanders’ Book Comes Home: A Banned Book’s Journey, illustrated by Micah Player (Random House, March 25), follows a personified library book who brings joy to patrons—until the day a nefarious “someone” banishes her to a closet with other banned titles. Sanders keeps the reasons for censorship fairly general (“Someone didn’t like me” and “They said kids wouldn’t understand me” explain some of Book’s new friends in the closet), but the fear and anxiety that accompany it are palpable, and backmatter offers further context; this is an ideal launching pad for age-appropriate conversations on book banning.
In Joanna Ho and Caroline Kusin Pritchard’s The Day the Books Disappeared (Disney-Hyperion, July 15), a boy named Arnold, bored by his classmates’ reading material, wishes all books but his favorite one would vanish. When the other titles disappear, he’s initially pleased—until his own cherished book joins them. By turns dramatic, funny, and poignant, Dan Santat’s expressive images trace Arnold’s trajectory as he realizes that while he may not like every story in his classroom, he doesn’t have the right to control what his classmates read—a lesson that should accompany any discussion on book banning.
Mahnaz Dar is a young readers’ editor.
