[COLD OPEN] The idea that librarians and educators are actively trying to tear children away from their parents, that's one of the worst, the most poisonous disinformation that's out there. That's one important message: librarians, educators are not enemies of parents. And they love their jobs, they want to serve the young people, they want to work with the parents. And we should always fight against that falsehood and recognize that it's there simply to tear us apart and divide us rather than allowing us to come together to work on the issue together.
[MUSIC, INTRO] This is The Book of Life, a show about Jewish kidlit, mostly, I'm Heidi Rabinowitz. If you've listened to the news lately, you know that libraries and schools are facing an outrageous number of book challenges. Jewish tradition encourages debate and the exchange of ideas, and to me, the attempted repression we are seeing right now is diametrically opposed to Jewish values and American values. Books about marginalized communities, including the Jewish community, have been targeted. Librarians -- librarians of all people! -- are being vilified. In the vein of the famous quote by Martin Niemöller, first they came for the LGBTQ books, then they came for the books about people of color; they've come for a few Jewish books as well, and we must speak out to protect the rights of all readers to have access to books that reflect their own experiences. That's why I asked Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the Director of the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom, to come on the podcast and talk about censorship. I learned a lot, including ways to help fight book banning.
Deborah, there's been a lot of news lately about censorship of children's and young adult books in libraries and schools. So for any listeners who aren't aware, please fill us in and explain what's going on.
Well, there's always been a level of censorship in schools and school libraries, it's understandable. Parents are concerned about their children, they're concerned about what they're consuming. But what we've seen in really the last six months to a year is a real acceleration in attempts to censor materials in schools and libraries. We've observed a number of well funded, well organized advocacy groups activate local chapters to go to school board meetings and library board meetings and demand the removal of books, primarily books dealing with the lives of LGBTQIA or black or indigenous persons. The end result of this effort is to erase the voices of these marginalized communities that have finally found a place on our stage in society, under this belief that somehow it's inappropriate for young people to know about gay people or the history of racism and slavery in the United States.
That was a good encapsulation. There have always, as you said, been attempts by adults to control what children read. But the recent rise in book challenges is so precipitous. What has changed?
I think what's changed is the perception by certain political actors that this is an issue that can be used as a wedge issue in elections. We can look back to the gubernatorial election in Virginia, where this issue around what books are available in the classroom was used, in part, to successfully challenge the incumbent governor so that Governor Youngkin won the election. And one of his first acts on becoming governor was to sign a bill that effectively provided tools for censoring books in the curriculum. And I think that that has helped accelerate it. But I also think that with the current situation where we have super majorities of Republicans and state legislatures, there is an attempt to seize the day to advance agendas, and one of the agendas is to impose a rigid orthodoxy on what young people are learning and able to access in schools, whether it's curriculum or libraries. So we're seeing state legislatures advance what are called divisive concept bills to prevent any instruction or discussion of issues around racism, sexism, gender identity, sexual orientation. Some of this goes under the false rubric of critical race theory, for example, that made up concept has nothing to do with the actual academic discipline that's applied to legal analysis, but has been used to stigmatize works dealing with the history of racism and slavery in the United States, particularly those written from the perspective of African Americans, or that reflect the lived experience of black persons with slavery, police violence. And so it's just been a really disturbing set of circumstances to watch develop over time. And really, we weren't prepared for it, we had assumed that there was a certain due process around the decisions around curriculum and the availability books and school libraries. But this campaign that we're seeing develop has broken all the rules around civic engagement, civil discourse, and has been pretty successful in persuading a number of school districts, states to begin to use censorship as a tool to control what young people read about.
Studies show that the large majority of voters across party lines oppose efforts to remove books from schools and from public libraries. So who is behind these attempts at book banning?
The groups and individuals involved with this campaign are most frequently either advocacy groups associated with the Republican Party, or with conservative Christian groups, or anti-pornography groups, and even groups on the fringe that oppose any kind of sex education in schools. And they've made common cause to eliminate the materials they jointly disapprove of. And so we're seeing attacks on materials intended to just relate the lives and experiences of LGBTQIA persons described as pornography, sex ed books described as pornography, and not only just pornography, but illegal pornography, obscenity that violates the law. At the same time, we're seeing attacks on books dealing with the lives of black persons described as efforts to indoctrinate white children into feeling bad about their race, or to advance what has been described frequently as a Marxist agenda. And I think that these fringe groups, this very vocal minority, has taken advantage of the fact that frequently we've disengaged from local community life. The pandemic accelerated some of this, but I think many of us, and I'm included in this, had stopped really paying attention to what happens at local school boards and local library boards, thinking that, you know, good civic minded people were taking care of business there and had our young people's best interests at heart. But in fact, they've been targeted both for these complaints, and you know, the extreme advocacy that goes along with these complaints about books, as well as seeing campaigns to elect extreme individuals who actually have censorship and book banning as part of their agenda if they are elected to school boards and library boards. It really is going to take a good effort on the part of those of us who believe that censorship is never a tool to be placed in the hands of elected officials or government agencies, to respond with this, to become reengaged at the local level, to start attending board meetings, to be aware of who's being elected to these boards and understand that that will have a real impact on our children's reading, our grandchildren's reading, and what we ourselves are able to access and read in the library.
So as you mentioned, we hear the words pornography and pedophilia thrown around a lot. And in my many decades as a children's librarian, I've never seen a juvenile book about either of those things. And it's kind of like in The Princess Bride, I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Absolutely.
So what is the disconnect here?
Well, the disconnect goes back to a deliberate reframing of what obscenity and pornography entails. Some of it is legal misrepresentation, they'll claim that any book that has any element that discusses sex or sexuality, gender identity, sexual orientation, as inherently obscene or pornographic for minors, and claim that the works are illegal, that in fact, when a librarian makes these works available, they're pandering obscenity to minors in a violation of the law. And because there isn't, frankly, good education around what the law is about, what obscenity actually is, we find that there is easy acceptance of this redefinition, this reframing of topics that are absolutely appropriate and legal, that the first amendment actually protects the consideration of these ideas, and ignoring the fact that many of these books that are being attacked are age and developmentally appropriate for their audiences. You know, a book on changing bodies and puberty and relationships intended for middle schoolers, like It's Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris, which was written by an educator in consultation with dozens of medical and psychology experts, is being painted as the worst kind of adult entertainment being placed in the hands of children. And without better knowledge of what the law entails, without better knowledge of the works themselves, it's easy to mislead board members, it's easy to inflame public opinion when you make these representations. And so it's incumbent on us to push back on this framing that's finding such success on social media and in public discourse. It's really interesting, we're seeing this also being used as a tool. We know of a couple of instances where individual parents stood up to defend the ability of students to read books about gender and sexual identity in high schools. And almost immediately, their social media is flooded with claims that they're pedophiles, or that the educator using these materials, a librarian offering these materials, are grooming children. And it's a deliberate attempt to use the language of pedophilia to stigmatize these materials, to stigmatize the educator or librarian, to advance this idea that this is just beyond the pale legally and morally for anyone to have access to. It's absolutely disinformation. It's absolutely misinformation. But without other voices out there pointing this out, as I said, I'm afraid that it's finding some success in certain quarters, particularly with certain elected officials, like governors in Texas and South Carolina,
There is often confusion over the term book banning, can you define it for us?
Well, we actually have a very precise definition of book banning that we use at the American Library Association. As you know, we collect data on books censorship. In fact, we are the original censorship hotline, we've been collecting data on book censorship since 1990. When we say a book has been banned, we define that as action by an elected official, a government body, or an employee of a government body, to prevent an intended audience's access to the book, whether that's taking the book off the shelf, unplugging an ebook platform, putting on highly restrictive filtering, all those are acts of banning. But the element that's important is that the government has made a decision to dictate what you can think about, what you can read about, which is absolutely in contravention to the principles of the First Amendment. We also use the term book challenge. And whenever someone asks to have a book removed from the library shelf, challenges the idea that a book has a place in the curriculum, and raises a complaint to a school board or library board responsible for the collection in that institution, we call that a challenge. We used to say that a challenge was a formal written complaint filed with the school or library. But we've had to expand that. Many of the individuals and groups challenging books today don't play by those rules. They don't play cricket, so to speak. They will disrupt board meetings with public comment sessions that focus on a few words of profanity or a paragraph in a book that describes a sex act when, you know, the book is Beloved and what's being described is the sexual abuse of a woman in slavery, and not putting it in context. And they'll say that in the public comment period, their complaint stands as a demand to remove the book, and it should be legally sufficient to cause the book's removal. So we now count complaints at board meetings. We count social media demands, we count public statements by advocacy groups as challenges when they name a book and say that it doesn't belong in a school or library's collection.
Okay, thank you. We all know that in the era of the Internet, kids have plenty of ways to access content, so banning books will not really protect them from anything. With that in mind, why is book banning becoming so widespread?
I think that they feel that this is an area they can control. There's so little in a parent's control these days. This is the one area that they feel that they should be able to influence, whether they can or not, and so it makes one feel good that you've got that bad book out of the high school library and you're protecting children by doing that, even though they can pull out their cell phone and access much worse material on the internet. The other part of it is that in some places, it actually would control what young people have access to. There are many, many communities in the United States where the school library might be the only place you can find books on gender identity, or sexual identity, or the experiences of black persons, or even stories about the Holocaust. And if those books are removed, or if they only reflect one particular viewpoint, it really impairs the ability of a young person to understand others' experiences, to develop critical thinking skills, to broaden their education. So many young people don't have cell phones, or they have a dumb phone rather than something that can access the internet. They don't have Wi Fi access at home. And so the school library absolutely becomes a lifeline. You know, if the library doesn't have it, they don't have access to it. We're acutely aware that that's the case, particularly in small towns and rural communities, where there isn't public transportation and broadband access is pretty spotty or non existent. So it's important for libraries to have the ability to collect and provide a variety of information on a variety of topics, so that those who want to need that information can access it.
Thank you. I really appreciate you pointing that out, because now I realize that my question came from my own place of privilege of having easy internet access. So that's a really good point.
We have seen clueless politicians suggesting that the Holocaust should be taught impartially. Besides the fact that this is a ludicrous suggestion, do you believe libraries or teachers should strive for neutrality? Can anyone ever really be neutral?
I think that's a question I like to divide. You know, I don't think libraries are neutral, nor should they be. They have a mission. We have values as a profession. We value equity, diversity and inclusion, we value intellectual freedom, those aren't in conflict. We can advance initiatives to make sure that libraries are welcoming and inclusive institutions, that the collections reflect the lives and experiences of everyone in the community, that they can find their stories in the library, feel that the library is a safe place for them. At the same time, there are parts of library service that have to be non-discriminatory. When I say welcoming and inclusive, that means we have to welcome everyone of all political persuasions. If they have inquiries about certain topics, depending on the mission of the library, and its collection development policy, you know, you may be acquiring and providing materials you personally disagree with as an individual, but it's part of your role as an information professional to make that information available to the inquirer. It's not an endorsement to do that. It's actually fulfilling your role as a community information professional. Some of this draws from the legal obligations of public employees to not discriminate. And we really want to uphold that role, because we don't want it turned around on us. I think very frequently about the county clerk in Kentucky who felt that her religious viewpoint entitled her to deny marriage licenses to same sex couples. And it's the same principle for library workers, whether it's in schools or libraries, you have to provide service without discrimination. It's just part of being a public employee. But that doesn't mean you can't promote the values you hold dear and you can't promote the interests of marginalized communities while you do that work.
Art Spiegelman, the author of the graphic novel Maus, has said that he doesn't think the banning of his book by the McMinn County School Board in Tennessee was an antisemitic incident. It seems to me that it was more about pajamafication, or discomfort with intense material. So I wanted to ask, what's your take? And is it important for young people to sometimes read things that might upset them?
Well, I'll start with your last point. I think absolutely. We can't shield young people from the terrible things that happen in the world. And we have to remember that some of them are actually experiencing them in real life, and we should support them by acknowledging that those things happen and not making them topics that are taboo, are off limits. But with the banning of Maus in McMinn County, I'll be honest, I actually felt it was kind of a quaint, old fashioned book banning. To be fair, they removed the book from the curriculum, but not from the library, so it's still accessible to the students who want to read it. But it was quaint and old fashioned because the concern was the use of swear words, and a brief incident of female mouse nudity. And that was their concern, was that as young people, they shouldn't be exposed to profanity or nudity with the endorsement of the school, which is very much a run of the mill kind of book challenge that we used to see a lot of. We still see them. I don't think that there was an antisemitic motivation behind the Maus thing. I think there is cultural cluelessness behind it, I think that they just wished that Maus was a slightly nicer book about the Holocaust that they could use with eighth graders, you know, and not an animus toward the topic or an attempt to deny the topic. And certainly, they said they wanted to find materials that they felt could be used with the eighth graders in their unit that studied the Holocaust. So it's an interesting case. And like I said, I almost found it charming in some aspects, because after so many terrible challenges, stigmatizing books, stigmatizing those with stand up for the freedom to read, stigmatizing librarians and educators as pedophiles and groomers, to find a school board whose concern was use of the F word in a book, as I said, was almost charming. I can't find another word. But on the other hand, I think that not recognizing that their eighth graders probably used worse language in the playground, or after school or the school bus, there's also a kind of naivete that they should not have had about the whole situation.
Right. It's unfortunately not uncommon for nonfiction books aimed at young people to include misinformation about the state of Israel. Yet, when these concerns are brought to public libraries, they are often perceived as book banning efforts rather than a fight against fake news. Do you think that the removal of public or school library books is justified if a book is inaccurate? And what about if the book is antisemitic or racist?
Those are always tough questions. It goes back to the question about neutrality. There are reasons sometimes for having books like that in the collection, whether it's for understanding the argument, so you can counter it, understanding the controversy around the book, because if the book's in the library, you're not paying the publisher, the author money to understand the ideas behind it, and to educate yourself about what's out there. On the other hand, if a book is inaccurate, and offers misinformation, it should not be offered as a source of that information. I remember, back in the day, when there was a real push to offer conversion therapy to gay people. There were a lot of books about becoming ex-gay. Our advice at the time was, well, you know, you have community members who are asking to access those books. Well, don't classify them as books addressing gender identity, sexual orientation, they are not scientific books; put them in your religion section, for example, for those who want to access them. And I think it's a comparable consideration for any public library or school library. What is the mission and goals of the library? What is its collection development policy? Does it serve a need? Does it support a class, for example, on misinformation or the status of antisemitism in the community, which can all be legitimate areas of learning and concern? So I think each case is an individual case to be decided by each library in light of its mission, goals, and its collection development policy and what it's intended to do. There's no one book that never belongs in the library, but it should be thoughtfully considered whether it has a place in that particular library.
Okay, that makes sense. That's a very nuanced answer. So there are a lot of book challenges happening. What is the success rate for these book bans? Are books being removed from the library shelves?
They are being removed. Electronic platforms is making it easy to remove books wholesale. I think about the Llano County, Texas, where a county commission who controls the library board made the decision to unplug completely from the OverDrive ebook platform, because there are two books available through OverDrive that they disapproved of. The books in particular were Gender Queer and Lawn Boy. Both books have been very controversial and have been highlighted on social media by these organized groups seeking to ban them. But that meant that many people in this rural community that relied on ebook access because they were elderly, shut ins, or unable to travel distances to access the physical library, all of a sudden lost all access to all information offered by their library. And they also removed dozens of other books. I'm sure you're familiar with the headlines around the booklist put together by Texas State Senator Matt Krause. And we know that both school boards and library boards have used that list as a means of sanitizing the collections, that librarians were tasked to see if the 852 books on that list were in the collection and removing them simply based on their appearance on Senator Krause's list. So absolutely book bans are happening. And they're not just happening in Texas. Those are illustrations and examples. We know that books are being removed in almost every state. Sometimes it's a single book. Sometimes it's multiple books. We know groups like Moms for Liberty show up at board meetings with a list of 15 or 20 titles they want out, often developed from information they gleaned from social media accounts of books censorship taking place across the country. There are some groups like No Left turn in Education that actually maintain a publicly accessible website with a banned book list. These local chapters of these groups are often successful in having books removed from the library. It happens most often at the school library level. You know, I can't give you hard numbers, it actually changes on a daily basis. And we know that not every incident of banning or censorship comes to our attention. Librarians are fearful for their jobs. And they sometimes believe that even contacting ALA, even confidentially, anonymously, with reports about book banning, might cost them their jobs, and that's something they can't afford. So they keep silent out of fear. And sometimes there's silent censorship. We know that all too often a parent will complain to a principal and the principal will go to the library, pull the book and put it in their desk drawer, it's never seen again. And those are the hardest kind of acts of censorship to keep track of. The librarian may not even know about it until they do a book inventory and find that the book is no longer on the shelf and it hasn't been borrowed in months. The culture of banning books runs deep, particularly in the school environment. We wish we could have a better accounting of it, but we know we don't get it.
So let's talk about how we can fight back. I heard about a group that was suing a school or a public library, I can't remember which it was, for violating their rights and removing materials that they deserve access to. And then also I know that ALA has a campaign called Unite Against Book Bans, which I definitely want to hear some more about. And you mentioned being involved in local politics, attending meetings of the school board and the library board. So tell us more about how we can push back against censorship.
There's a lot in your question, so I'm going to unpack it one topic at a time. I'll start with the lawsuits. When a book is removed for unconstitutional reasons, absent a change of heart by the board members voting to remove the book, or absent a change in the membership of the board, the only way to vindicate the rights of the reader is to go to court. And we're aware of two lawsuits that are proceeding right now. The first is in Wentzville, Missouri; the ACLU of Missouri is representing a group of students and the Wentzville Missouri School District, and is suing the school district for removing six books from the school library shelves. The second lawsuit that we're aware of is a group of citizens in Llano County, Texas have sued. This is the county where the county commissioners cut off access to the entire eBook platform and removed about 100 books from the shelf based on the Krause list. And it's their intent, if they have to, to go all the way to the Supreme Court to vindicate their right to access books in the library and not have books censored based on the religious or political objections of a small group of people. So we'll see how those lawsuits proceed. But that is the endpoint, that's the final act you can take to try to stop censorship is to hold the government body accountable for the violation of civil rights and civil liberties. What's better is prevention and prevention starts, as I said earlier, with involvement in local politics. In the United States, we don't have a national book authority, the Library of Congress serves Congress, it doesn't serve the country. So we have to look to our local library boards or local school boards. And so it means being involved with what the board is doing, what it's deciding, being aware of who is being elected, participate in elections, vote, you know, and the ultimate act there is to run for school board and to run for library board, knowing that you'll be there to preserve everyone's freedom to read, but also advocacy. Elected officials are buying into this because they believe it's a winning issue at election time. And what we'd like to do is to convince them otherwise, that advancing this legislation is not good for their election prospects, that in fact, the majority of voters of all political persuasions disagree with censorship as a government tool for controlling thought. And that's what Unite Against Book Bans is all about. What we wanted to create was an opportunity for people from all political persuasions, from all backgrounds, members of the public, to come together in a grassroots effort to oppose book censorship in our schools and libraries, provide a point of mobilization for that majority that hasn't existed yet, come together locally, come together nationally, to make it clear that we won't stand for our government officials or government agencies telling us what to think, telling us what to read, that it's up to us to choose what we want to read. It's up to parents to guide their family's reading, but not to dictate what's available to the rest of the community. And that's what Unite Against Book Bans is all about. So right now, we're in the first phase of the campaign, going out to the world and asking individuals to sign up to cast their vote in favor of the freedom to read. We're also going to be introducing partners in this work, educational organizations, civil liberties organizations, and those most impacted by this: booksellers, publishers, as well. And to come together in a nonpartisan way on this one issue, which is censorship. Everyone can agree that censorship is a tool of totalitarian governments, and that we shouldn't be using that. We now have a toolkit available for individuals to use to oppose censorship. And we'll be creating more opportunities for individuals to make their voices heard and to reach out to elected officials, to library boards, and to school boards, go to UniteAgainstBookBans.org. And you'll find a wealth of materials to help you fight censorship.
I was just about to ask you for that address, so thank you. It's Tikkun Olam time. What action would you like to call listeners to take to help heal the world?
Boy, that's a hard question. I think what I really would ask is for everyone to have the charity and the generosity to recognize that people have different experiences, different backgrounds, are acting in good faith and to treat them as such, that we all should be entitled to live our lives as we see fit in light of our own spiritual guidance, our own beliefs, and that that's what our country is about, is giving people the freedom to do that, but still respecting the rights of others to live their lives as well. And that that means a shared ethos of tolerance and goodwill toward everyone and understand that it's not a threat that someone different from you exists in the world.
That's beautiful. Is there anything else that you would like to talk about that I haven't thought to ask you?
The one thing that is bothering me about the rhetoric that's flying around is the idea that places librarians and educators in opposition to parents, that librarians and educators are actively trying to tear children and students away from their parents. And we both know that that's absolutely untrue. That's one of the worst, the most poisonous disinformation that's out there. I can't think of a single library professional or educator that would not work with a parent, no matter what their beliefs or political persuasion is, to identify the materials that are best suited for that family. And that a librarian or an educator serves the needs of another family with different needs and desires doesn't take anything away. And I think that's one important message to get out there. Librarians, educators are not enemies of parents. And they love their jobs, they want to serve the young people, they want to work with the parents, and that we should always fight against that falsehood and recognize that it's there simply to tear us apart and divide us rather than allowing us to come come together to work on the issue together.
Yeah, that's something that I find particularly shocking. In my many years as a librarian, anytime somebody says, Oh, what do you do? and you say, librarian, and especially if you say, children's librarian, the warm fuzzies come out. Everybody loves librarians, everybody loves children's books. And so the idea that that is a demographic that's being vilified is just completely shocking, and seems to me highly cynical, because it's unnatural to feel that way about librarians.
Absolutely. It's so terrible. But there is some good news. Polling has been done. And one of the strongest numbers to come out of the polling was that 91% of the people polled, no matter what their political persuasion, parents or just adults in the world, 91% believe in the work of the librarians, and they approve of the work that the library is doing. They support their libraries. They think libraries are a force for good in their community. So we have to hold tight to that and remember that what we're hearing from is a vocal minority and not the prevailing sentiment in our country today.
That's a very encouraging statistic. Thank you for sharing that. Deborah Caldwell-Stone, thank you so much for speaking with me.
Oh, Heidi, it was really great to share this time with you and your listeners, and I really thank you for the opportunity.
[MUSIC, DEDICATION TEASER] Hi, my name is Ellery. I live in Massachusetts. I'm 13 years old. I'm very excited about being a teenager. I am a former member of the PJ Our Way design team. I'd like to dedicate this episode to Eliza, who is my former school librarian. She was an amazing source of just love of books and book recommendations. And she always made me feel just really happy and comfortable discussing anything even if it wasn't necessarily about reading. Thanks, Eliza.
Hi, I'm Hudson. I'm a former member of the design team. I'm 10 years old and I live in Los Angeles. We'll be joining you soon on the Book of Life podcast, and I'm gonna dedicate this episode to my parents because without them I wouldn't be getting a supply of books.
[MUSIC, OUTRO] Say hi to Heidi at 561-206-2473 or bookoflifepodcast@gmail.com Check out our Book of Life podcast Facebook page, or our Facebook discussion group Jewish Kidlit Mavens. We are occasionally on Twitter too @bookoflifepod. Want to read the books featured on the show? Buy them through Bookshop.org/shop/bookoflife to support the podcast and independent bookstores at the same time. You can also help us out by becoming a monthly supporter through Patreon. Additional support comes from the Association of Jewish Libraries, which also sponsors our sister podcast, Nice Jewish Books, a show about Jewish fiction for adults. You'll find links for all of that and more at BookofLifepodcast.com Our background music is provided by the Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band. Thanks for listening and happy reading!
[MUSIC, PROMO] If the subtitle "A Novel of Love, Faith and the Talmud" makes you think that the newest book by Maggie Anton will transport you to the time of ancient rabbis, you would be off by more than 1000 years. Instead in The Choice, Maggie was inspired by the works of Chaim Potok and was curious about the hidden lives of the women in his books. I'm Sheryl Stahl. Join me for the next episode of Nice Jewish Books at www.JewishLibraries.org/NiceJewishBooks.
