Guest post by Noel Holston
News item from The Washington Post:
“According to the American Library Association, conservative activists in several states, including Texas, Montana and Louisiana, have joined forces with like-minded officials to dissolve libraries’ governing bodies, rewrite or delete censorship protections, and remove books outside of official challenge procedures.
“Leaders have taken works as seemingly innocuous as the popular children’s picture book In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak off the shelves (and) closed library board meetings to the public. . . .”
All I can say is, IT’S ABOUT TIME!
Public libraries are a public menace, especially for young, impressionable minds. I am living proof — living, permanently scarred proof.
I grew up in Laurel, Mississippi, now best known as the star of HGTV’s popular house-makeover show Home Town. In the late 1950s and 1960s, when I was in my formative youth, it was better known for its shady mayor, Klan activity and a stinky Masonite plant.
Laurel, however, did have a great public library. I was a regular from an early age, especially in summer, when you got a star on a big poster board for every book you consumed.
As I moved into my tweens, I was still happily reading Hardy Boys mysteries, inspirational, youth-oriented biographies of great men like Admiral Richard Byrd, Thomas Edison and Yogi Berra, and occasionally a mystery by Agatha Christie or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I saved my money and even bought books occasionally at Laurel’s Baptist Bible and Book Shop.
At some point, I decided I should read something from the best seller list. I asked at the front desk of the library for recommendations, little knowing there was a subversive librarian just waiting for any easy mark to pounce on.
Miss Eva Mae, a soft-spoken gray-haired lady with a sweet smile, said, in essence, “You know, Noel, there are many better books here than what’s on those best-seller lists.”
“Really?” I said.
“Come with me,” she said with a nod of her head, leading me deep into an adult-section aisle.
She showed me several books. They tended to be slightly worn looking and lacking the fancy, pictorial dust jackets of the newest arrivals.
I passed on David Copperfield and Wuthering Heights. I’d seen the movie versions on TV. I settled on John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, the fattest, heaviest book I had ever checked out.
And that’s how I was lost. The story of the Joad family, hardscrabble farmers like my ancestors, told of poverty and bad luck, desperation, mean bosses, heartless bankers, courage, anger.
Just like that, I outgrew Joe and Frank Hardy. Tom Swift, too. I was soon checking out books by James Baldwin, J.D. Salinger, Carson McCullers, William Faulkner.
And so it was that I gradually morphed into a free-thinking, questing liberal. I couldn’t stop myself. I read books like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Women’s Room, Slaughterhouse 5 and The Other America.
When I had kids, two sons, I read In the Night Kitchen to them — many, many times — despite the fact that it included a couple of illustrations of the hero, a boy named Mickey, in his birthday suit. I let them read To Kill a Mockingbird before they reached puberty.
They became even more progressive and free thinking than I.
So, you see, those Texas folks are right. Public libraries are dangerous places, especially for the young.
They might get ideas.
Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He regularly shares his insights and wit at Wry Wing Politics. He’s also a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (200-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune (1986-2000). He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” by Skyhorse.