Banned Books Week 2023 saw coordinated efforts to inform audiences about intellectual freedom and counteract the onslaught of book censorship. In a webinar titled “Free People Read Freely: How Children’s Book Creatives Can Fight Book Banning,” Joyce McIntosh of the Freedom to Read Foundation spoke with Laurent Linn of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators about why librarians, teachers, and creators must not bend to book bans.
Linn, who is art director at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers and a member of SCBWI’s advisory council, introduced the livestreamed event. “We at SCBWI are increasingly disturbed by the ferocity and sophistication of this current wave of book challenges, bans, and censorship,” he said. Although Linn acknowledged that “it’s easy to feel helpless” amid attacks on inclusiveness and expression, he reminded the audience that FTRF has been around since 1969 to advocate for First Amendment rights.
McIntosh spent much of her career in a Chicago-area public library before joining the FTRF as assistant program director. She opened with words of reassurance for writers. “Please don’t be afraid to publish a book you have in you,” she said. “While we are experiencing this chilling effect throughout the country right now, the majority of people on all sides of the political spectrum want to have access to information.” She emphasized that while individuals may choose what’s ideal for their families, they don’t get to “determine what’s right for [their] neighbors.”
Although McIntosh is not a lawyer and does not give legal advice, she spoke from the perspective of an LIS professional well-versed in categorizing books and advancing social justice. “We often hear these days, ‘Oh, the crazy liberal librarians are doing this or that,’” she said, from those unaware of the American Library Association’s code of ethics. But “we can't just make up rules, and we can’t just decide we don’t like materials. With challenges, we’re ensuring access to information, and we don’t have to defend the content of every book. Our policies must be followed by everyone, and they must follow our local, state, and federal laws.”
Bright Spots
Librarians used to be able to have one-on-one conversations with parents disputing children’s access to certain books, McIntosh said, using the example of the Harry Potter series. But “all of a sudden we saw large, organized, well-funded groups” circumventing regular policies, disrupting storytimes and exhibits, and making legislative attempts to censor materials. “Now, librarians and educators are having to be prepared for any of these interactions at any given moment,” McIntosh said.
She believes some situations could be managed with a better understanding of how school districts sort their collections. For instance, it’s exceedingly likely that “your kindergartener doesn’t have access to All Boys Aren’t Blue. That’s actually on the shelf at the high school. It’s important to say that books are catalogued. Let’s look at where they’re located.” If this argument doesn’t satisfy determined book banners, McIntosh turns to First Amendment arguments.
“The one area where I truly see hope,” she said, “is that judges have absolutely ruled with upholding the First Amendment. Not a single case in the U.S. has declared any of these books obscene for minors or pornographic. Just because a parent says it at a meeting doesn’t make it true.” She pointed to Miller v. California, the 1973 Supreme Court case that defines obscenity, noting that “a book has to be evaluated as a whole. You can’t judge the book by that single F-bomb or the one line that’s being read” to shock a school board audience.
She added, “You can’t remove titles just because a person or group disagrees with the content. If a group of trustees or parents or anyone else says, ‘We don’t want any LGBTQ content in our library,’ a judge would look at that and say it’s viewpoint discrimination, pure and simple.”
Throughout her talk, McIntosh called attention to a few of FTRF’s more than 200 national partner organizations. She recommended that the audience explore First Book and its study on The Impact of a Diverse Classroom Library. First Book “found that if you increase diverse books in the classroom, it increases the amount of time that children read,” McIntosh said, likely because young readers encounter books that represent their identities, communities, and interests.
Several organizations including FTRF offer confidential support to librarians, educators, and others facing censorship, McIntosh said. At FTRF, “if you call us up and say, ‘My book has been challenged, what can I do?,’ we will provide confidential support, and where circumstances allow, we write letters of support.” The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is a similar mode of recourse for graphic narrative creators facing censorship. And another initiative, the Merritt Fund, offers grants “for library workers who are experiencing discrimination in the workplace or have had their jobs threatened due to defense of intellectual freedom.”
The ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom provides confidential consultations around materials, programming, policies, or services; the National Council of Teachers of English takes up curricular concerns through the NCTE Intellectual Freedom Center; and the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights is working on an initiative to help individuals report book removals from libraries.
McIntosh emphasized that, whatever an audience member’s position related to libraries, bookstores, and publishing, “each of us must find a way to be an advocate. We must be advocates because public libraries should not get bomb threats. We must be advocates because public library directors and teachers should not get fired because of blatant viewpoint discrimination or because of a few voices that are loud but don’t reflect our whole community. And finally, we must be advocates because you should not be afraid to write or draw the story that you each have in you.”
