Proper now, one thing completely unimaginable is occurring in Long Beach, California. The Lengthy Seashore Public Library Basis, which incorporates 11 neighborhood branches and the flagship Billie Jean King Major Library, simply introduced that it’s partnering with the Brooklyn Public Library. Their aim? By October twenty fifth, each single teenager within the nation could have free access to books which may have been banned or restricted in their area.
It’s fairly superior to witness a library struggle so fiercely, throwing out copies of Looking for Alaska, or Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, like a bookish Adonis Creed. As a result of that is exactly what this second wants: fearlessness and tenacity within the face of censorship.
The partnership that’s altering all the pieces
Libraries are shared havens, secure areas that supply far more than the Dewey Decimal system. Everyone seems to be welcome right here on the public library, whether or not you’re sitting down and studying, utilizing the printer, or by chance taking a look at your cellphone your complete time, solely to comprehend you bought zero work executed in any respect.
However that is completely different.
That is about libraries remodeling into protectors of mental freedom and champions towards censorship.
Libraries are preventing again. Photo credit: Canva
Right here’s the way it works: Beginning this fall, teenagers between 13 and 19 years previous anyplace in the USA will be capable to sign up for a free digital library card from the Long Beach Public Library. All contributors should fill out an software to achieve entry to the library’s digital sources, then renew yearly to retain it.
As soon as permitted, they’ll have full entry to the library’s complete assortment of e-books and audiobooks via the Libby app. There, they’ll discover a treasure trove of titles which have been challenged or banned elsewhere, such because the New York Occasions bestseller, Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen, which obtained 66 bans final yr. Or, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky’s cult-favorite coming-of-age story, which is at present tied for the third most-banned guide in America.
These books and tales, they too, are infinite. Credit score: Giphy
In truth, Susan Jones, the library’s supervisor of automated companies, instructed the Long Beach Post that the library really intends to develop its database of banned books and buy “titles that could be going through censorship challenges nationwide” to reduce wait occasions.
With its most up-to-date alliance, the Lengthy Seashore Public Library Basis joins the Brooklyn Public Library’s nationwide “Books Unbanned” motion. Impressed by the American Library Affiliation’s Freedom to Read Statement and the Library Bill of Rights, Books Unbanned was based to “help the rights of teenagers nationwide to learn what they like, kind their very own opinions, and work along with friends throughout the nation to defend and develop the liberty to learn.” Different members of the Books Unbanned coalition embrace the Boston Public Library, the Los Angeles Public Library, the San Diego Public Library, and the Seattle Public Library.
“We began Books Unbanned in April 2022, and we actually did it in response to all of the tales we have been listening to about books being banned throughout the nation. … We wished to determine a option to get books within the arms of younger individuals who have been being denied them,” said Fritzi Bodenheimer, a spokesperson for the Brooklyn Public Library. “We simply didn’t really feel like, as a public library, we may simply sit again and watch this occur.”
A video explaining Books Unbanned. Credit score: YouTube
The response has been overwhelming. Bodenheimer urges different libraries like Lengthy Seashore to step up and supply books which are underneath assault, earlier than it is too late.
“Since we launched in April 2022, we’ve had nearly 10,000 younger folks join a card, and so they’re from all 50 states. They’ve checked out … near or possibly over 300,000 books,” Bodenheimer instructed the Long Beach Post. “It’s extremely thrilling and heartwarming, and it’s additionally extremely heartbreaking as a result of it means there’s a necessity.”
Why this issues so, a lot
Studying is underneath assault. And the necessity for motion has by no means felt extra pressing. In accordance with the American Library Affiliation’s (ALA) annual report, there have been 821 makes an attempt to censor library books and supplies in 2024, with 2,452 distinctive titles being challenged—the third-highest quantity ever documented by ALA.
What’s significantly regarding is that 72% of these censorship demands got here from organized “stress teams” and “the directors, board members, and elected officers they influenced,” fairly than particular person dad and mom (16%) or group members (4%). Greater than half of those challenges came about in public libraries (55%), with faculty libraries following shut behind (38%).
Let’s be clear. The books being focused aren’t random.
Books aren’t challenged or banned accidentally. They’re focused.Photo credit: Canva
These are tales written by or about Black, Indigenous, Folks of Colour (BIPOC), or LGBTQ+ people that discover their experiences, histories, and actions. They deal with race and racism, and dive head-first into the experiences of marginalized communities. In different phrases, these are the very books that would assist younger folks see themselves mirrored in literature or empathize with views completely different from their very own.
“We’re witnessing an effort to get rid of complete genres and classes of books from library cabinets in pursuit of a bigger aim of putting politics and faith over the well-being and training of younger folks and everybody’s proper to entry and discover info in our libraries,” reports Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of ALA’s Workplace for Mental Freedom.
In 2024, these have been the highest 10 most often focused books:
- All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto by George M. Johnson.
- Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe.
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky.
- Tricks by Ellen Hopkins.
- Looking for Alaska by John Inexperienced.
- Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jessie Andrews.
- Crank by Ellen Hopkins.
- Sold by Patricia McCormick.
- Flamer by Mike Curato.
Actual tales, actual affect
The facility of this program turns into crystal clear if you hear from the teenagers themselves, their voices and lives recorded in a set of hundreds of tales referred to as “In Their Own Words: Youth Voices on Books Unbanned.”
“The library closest to me could be very underfunded, and it is rather conservative. It has a plethora of Christian novels, however their novels surrounding folks of shade and different religions are very restricted. As an individual of shade, it sucks to not be capable to see myself in novels I learn,” writes an nameless 17-year-old reader in Texas.
“There are books that I can’t take house as a result of they might put me in peril. Studying digitally permits me to maintain myself secure however nonetheless give[s] me the power to learn freely,” says one other, this time, a 19-year-old in Virginia.
Lastly, in California, a 16-year-old explains, “If it hadn’t been for the books accessible to me about completely different marginalized folks’s views in my faculty libraries rising up, I may need grown as much as be a really completely different individual.”
The struggle continues
This partnership represents one thing greater than books. It’s about democracy, human empathy, and the assumption that each one younger folks deserve entry to tales to assist them perceive themselves and the world round them.
In a time when literary censorship is at an all-time excessive, Lengthy Seashore Public Library’s allegiance with Books Unbanned provides one thing radical and treasured: a glimmer of hope.
Our public libraries are treasured. Photo credit: Canva
It’s a reminder that our libraries won’t go down simply. That folks across the nation wish to shield mental freedom simply as a lot as you do. And they’re keen to struggle tooth and nail for each younger individual’s proper to learn, be taught, and develop.
Lengthy Seashore Public Library’s Books Unbanned program is slated to launch in October 2025, simply in time for this yr’s Banned Books Week, the place the theme is “Censorship Is So 1984. Learn for Your Rights.” Is that this a blessing from George Orwell himself, telling us that we’re on the right track? I hope so.
