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Martha Hickson, media specialist at North Hunterdon High School in Annandale, N.J., was among the vanguard raising a torch for the freedom to read when, in 2019, a superintendent demanded she remove Alison Bechdel’s memoir Fun Home from library shelves. “I refused, and a protracted battle ensued,” Hickson recalls. “I thought that fight was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Little did I know what was to come.” In 2021, administrators again went after Fun Home, this time along with Juno Dawson’s This Book Is Gay, Jonathan Evison’s Lawn Boy, George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue, and Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer. Hickson again defended the books. “All of the books that have been challenged at my school have been associated with LGBTQ+ content,” she says. “The book banners in my area of the world understand that it’s not a good look to go after racially based content, but for whatever reason they have no problem being accused of being homophobic.” #BooksNotBans #SupportLibraries #LibrariesAreForEveryone #BannedBooksWeek #Bookstagram #FreedomToRead

According to AAP's StatShot program, industry sales were up 5.6% in the first half of 2024. Sales of adult titles rose 6.7%, but sales in the children's and young adult segment fell 2.7%.

Today, Brooky Parks works as a business and economics reference librarian at the University of Denver. But from 2019 to 2021, she served at northeastern Colorado’s Erie Community Library. “When I was in grad school, I didn’t want to go into school libraries, because I thought I’d have to deal with more censorship. I decided to go into public libraries. But it’s not safe at all,” Parks says, after the job she says she loved was taken from her by book banners. In Erie, Parks organized an LGBTQ book club for teens and youth anti-racist programming. But when a handful of patrons complained, the High Plains Library District canceled her projects. When she protested, the district fired her. Parks says she was offered $5,000 “to help bridge the gap in between employment,” on the condition she sign an agreement not to sue. Instead, she filed an anti-discrimination lawsuit. With the help of lawyer Iris Halpern, Parks negotiated a $250,000 settlement in September 2023. But while the legal victory made national headlines, the money has done nothing to ease the feelings of loss for being forced out of her job. “It’s hard not to take it personally,” Parks says. “It feels very isolating.” #BooksNotBans #SupportLibraries #LibrariesAreForEveryone #BannedBooksWeek #Bookstagram #FreedomToRead

For Suzette Baker, former head of the Kingsland Library in Llano County, Tex., being a librarian was her dream job. As former military, she found purpose in serving. She loved making fun, quirky book displays. And she deeply understood the importance of the work she was doing. “If you look at a country and you look at their libraries, the freedom that exists in the library reflects the freedom that exists in the country,” she says. “So, if freedom is what we want in our country, then freedom is what we must have in our libraries.” But in 2021, as a politically organized book-banning movement was gaining steam in Texas, Baker found herself on the horns of a dilemma. An employee at the Llano branch of the library had found a copy of the illustrated guidebook It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health wrongly shelved in the children’s section…[and] brought it to the attention of local political Groups. As Baker recalls, things “steamrolled” from there. Soon after the incident, local officials began ordering books they unilaterally deemed “pornographic” be removed from the library, the bulk of which were by or about the LGBTQ community. Baker resisted, and spoke out, setting in motion a series of events that would soon lead to her dismissal—a move that would help spark a federal lawsuit by concerned citizens in Llano County, as well as Baker’s own lawsuit against the county for wrongful determination. Today, Baker works as a cashier in a hardware store. “Honestly, I’ve had a lot of difficult days. But it’s worth it. Because this fight is for all of us. As librarians, this what we do, this is what we love,” she says….“This really was my dream job. I’m 57 years old. This is where I was planning to be, doing a job that I absolutely adored, until I retired. Now I’m a cashier at a hardware store, and in another county because I can’t get a job in Llano,” she says. “But, if I can fight back and I can win, it means that every librarian has the power to stand up and say no. It means that every librarian can fight back and win.” #BooksNotBans #SupportLibraries #LibrariesAreForEveryone #BannedBooksWeek #Bookstagram #FreedomToRead

For 27 years, Terri Lesley was a fixture at the Campbell County Public Library in Gillette, Wyo., the last 13 years as director. “I grew up in Gillette,” she says. “I know a lot of people and have made a lot of connections in the community over many years.” But like so many librarians caught up in this pernicious wave of book banning, she didn’t see the end coming until it was too late. The first warning shots came in summer 2021, when local activists objected to a Pride Month social media post by the library and a transgender magician’s scheduled appearance at the library. Things escalated quickly, with one local family (multiple members of which Lesley is now suing for defamation) even reporting the library to the local sheriff after finding a handful of LGBTQ-themed books in the children’s section of the library. That move garnered national media attention, but no charges. And the library board at the time backed Lesley. In the coming months, however, the library would receive nearly 60 book challenges—most concerning LGBTQ content—up from zero in previous years. And then came the big change: a new library board was seated. For months Lesley resisted the new board’s directives to remove books from the library. Then, on July 28, 2023, the board called a public meeting and fired Lesley. The room was filled with nearly 200 Lesley supporters that day, who criticized the board in their public comments and greeted the board’s decision with a one finger salute. Lesley left the room that day to a standing ovation. #BooksNotBans #SupportLibraries #LibrariesAreForEveryone #BannedBooksWeek #Bookstagram #FreedomToRead

Civil rights attorney Iris Halpern has had a lot of experience fighting for the constitutional rights of her clients. But she hasn’t represented many—if any—librarians over the course of her career. That is, until now. In September 2023 Halpern made national headlines when she negotiated a $250,000 settlement for librarian Brooky Parks, who was fired from her job at Erie Community Library (Erie, Colo.) in 2021 for promoting anti-racism and LGBTQ history workshops for teens. Halpern, a partner at Denver-based law firm Rathod Mohamedbhai who specializes in cases involving employees victimized by discrimination, is also representing two more librarians in similar actions…..“I’ve had to become an expert very quickly,” says Halpern, when asked about the issues facing the librarians she now counts as clients. But, she adds, it didn’t take long for her to recognize the playbook be used by book banners in libraries and schools across the country, and, maybe more importantly, in state legislatures. “If you look at all these book bans and all these laws that are passing across the country, none of them are going to survive constitutional scrutiny. So it’s pretty clear that these laws are in fact aimed at scaring librarians and administrators as part of a political power play,” Halpern explains. “They’re trying to have our public institutions send the message out that certain groups are not welcome or are second class, which is particularly pernicious and dangerous.” “I’m hopeful… but litigation is fundamentally responsive. It’s not proactive. It’s after someone got fired, after books have been taken off the shelves, after our curriculums and our schools and our programming in our libraries has been suppressed, which we should all be very angry about,” Halpern says. “We need to organize around that. We really need our communities to stand up and do what they can. These librarians are very brave, but they cannot do it on their own. It’s extracting too heavy a price.” #BooksNotBans #SupportLibraries #LibrariesAreForEveryone #BannedBooksWeek #Bookstagram #FreedomToRead