When I was a little girl, my family read me — the Little House books, fairy tales, and news in the newspaper. Every single night, there were stories. In the morning before work, my Dad read me the comics.
Then I went to school. There were more books. I read ahead of my grade level, but there was not much challenge. I spent a good part of each school day helping kids who were “slow readers.” After school, I went to my beloved Carnegie Library. My Dad got off work at five and would call my Mom, “Where’s Barbara?” He never knew where he would find me in that fantastic Library because I read everything – kids, teens, adults, geography, religion, art, and magazine sections. Everything.
Then came 6th grade. Boring! … I spent most of it tutoring kids and going out on kindergarten patrol. The teacher always demanded to approve the books we were reading. Just like class, the books she chose for us were so boring. But one time, she “let” us go to the Library to pick out a book for a book report. I was an old hand at the Library, so I quickly picked a book from the adult section and took it to school for her approval.
But no – no approval. She frowned, flipped the pages, and declared I wasn’t old enough to read or touch it. She would take it back to the Library herself. As I recall, it was a book about a woman in the military. Women in the military were rare then. As the story rolled out, the woman was watched as she took a shower … watched by a male soldier. There was no privacy.
I went home and told my Mom — the teacher took my book. “WHAT?!!!? She responded, and we got in the car and drove to my grade school. Telling me to stay in the car, she angrily clomped up the stairs and talked with the teacher. Then we drove to the Library. This time I was invited to go in with her where, my mother declared, “Barbara can read any book in this Library. I don’t want anyone stopping her from reading. It doesn’t matter what section. Barbara can read any book in this Library!”
Now, admittedly. There was a naked woman near the beginning of the novel my teacher banned, but knowing that didn’t hurt me. Facts are facts! Women … and men … can be naked in life and books. Kids know that. They also know many other facts they don’t tell their parents, even if they have parents different than mine, even if their parents have secrets – secret lives, secret books, secret views of history. Kids learn things away from their parents, even when they have parents who want their kids “protected” from life, history, and the real world. Do we want people to be forced into reading secretly like the Nazis forced people in WWII?
I love books! I have proper bookshelves lining the walls of my office. I have books artfully piled in baskets, on the floor, and by my bed. The coffee table has seven books stacked on it, plus three newspapers.
One of the books on my coffee table is “The Keeper of Hidden Books” by Madeline Martin; it’s a historical novel – a page-turner based on the history of Occupied Poland as Hitler’s Nazis took over.
The German Fascists denied history, just like we’re again all over our country. The fascists destroyed books and denied readers the right to read and learn. Their actions reminded me of Wyoming – see MY RURAL AMERICA’S news story: Wyoming Readers Applaud Fired Librarian Terri Lesley. The Library Board didn’t ban books; they “merely” restricted people from reading. What saved the book were the hundreds of people who supported Ms Lesley.
In “The Keeper of Hidden Books,” every day, the Fascist Nazis came to the Library and demanded more books be pulled from the stacks. They sought to erase Polish culture and history while targeting Polish people deemed “different” – not good loyal Germans, Jews, LGBTQ, people with disabilities, people who spoke up, the old, and the frail. It was an ugly time. Bombs rained in, and the heroines worked to save the books and the people.
An ugly time, but the book paints a picture. In a sense, it’s like a primer or a recipe for how withholding, burning, destroying, and hiding books is only the beginning. In Wyoming, the Board targeted books about LGBT. Although books weren’t destroyed, they were hidden and restricted, but in Poland, the Germans weren’t satisfied with just hiding books; they targeted medicine, science, history, and much more; they started with shortlists, but the lists and the people targeted grew and grew.
These destroyers of libraries – destroyers of culture, history, and our freedom to read what we want and need to learn, are all over our country. The movement to ban books grows. PEN America – The Freedom to Write has been fighting for our right to read/write what we want for 100 years, but the book-banners are more active than ever.
PEN offers this Banned Book Data Snapshot
- 2,532 instances of books; 1,648 unique titles of books; 1,261 authors; 290 illustrators; 28 translators.
- 41% of books banned have LGBT characters; 40% have people of color as characters; 22% have sexual content; and the remainder relates to rights and activism, biographies and memoirs, and religion.
All banned. In Florida, educators have removed books in their entirety because they are afraid of new state laws – Florida’s governor thinks enslaved people were learning skills for better jobs (HELLO!) I guess he thinks enslaved people were lucky.
The librarian was fired in Wyoming because she refused to hide the books. Even the classic “To Kill a Mocking Bird” by Harper Lee, written in 1960, has recently been challenged in Accomack County, VA; Burbank, CA; and Biloxi, MS. What will they ban next?
It breaks my heart that I have to wonder. Do today’s book banners think these issues will stay secret? Do they believe that kids don’t talk to each other or watch TV? What’s next? The Stone Age? When they get done banning and burning books, do they eliminate women’s right to vote?
What are these people thinking?