Over the past two years, upwards of 18,000 young children in the Las Vegas metro area have received free monthly books in the mail as part of an early literacy program started by country icon Dolly Parton. But that ends this month.

Storied Inc., the Clark County-based nonprofit partner for Parton’s Imagination Library, last week announced to parents and guardians that its October books would be the last until additional funding for the program is secured. The program, when funded, provides a free, age-appropriate monthly book to children 0 to 5 years old.

According to Meredith Helmick, executive director of Storied, the nonprofit sought funding from the Nevada State Legislature earlier this year to keep the program going after an initial two-years of state grant funding ended, but they came up empty handed.

Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager sponsored a bill to appropriate to the United Way of Northern Nevada and the Sierra, which currently runs the Imagination Library for Washoe County residents, to expand the program statewide. The bill was referred to the Assembly Committee on Ways & Means, where it languished until the end of the regular session without a hearing or even a mention, according to the legislature’s website.

Helmick also hoped the nonprofit program might be able to secure funding through , Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro’s omnibus education legislation.

An early version of that bill appropriated $50 million for early childhood literacy readiness programs, but an amendment reduced that to $0 for the fiscal year beginning July 2025 and $12 million for the fiscal year beginning July 2026. Helmick says lawmakers chose to prioritize expansion of preschool seats, a Cannizzaro priority.

SB460 was heavily negotiated and amended to include many of Gov. Joe Lombardo’s education priorities. Those priorities included setting aside $7 million in grant funding for charter school transportation.

It appears those other priorities came at the expense of existing innovative programs that were working.

Helmick says a survey of her families last year found 62% of them had fewer than 20 children’s books in their homes before enrolling their children in the program.

“This program is such a low cost, high reward program,” she added.

Helmick is hopeful the program can return to the Las Vegas area. She says Storied is having conversations with large companies and other nonprofits, reaching out to elected officials at all levels of government, and urging their supporters to do the same.

“We’ve heard rumors of a special session,” she adds. “Can we rewrite SB460 to include the language that it took out? Are there other funds that we could add or tap into that we could fit under? Maybe that’s an avenue.”

‘It isn’t just about the books’

Meredith Helmick and her husband, Kyle, were inspired to start Storied Inc. after attempting to sign up their daughter for Imagination Library only to learn the nationwide program didn’t serve their area.

Dolly Parton launched Imagination Library in 1995 and the program has since given out more than 250 million free books to children in the United States and four other countries.

Storied Inc. is one of several partners running the program in Nevada. According to Helmick, the other partners have managed to continue their programs, either in whole or by scaling down the number of kids served.

The sheer size of Clark County’s population makes that a tougher task for Storied. According to the Imagination Library’s website, nearly 29,000 Nevada children are enrolled, the vast majority through Storied.

Helmick says that before they even had a chance to market the program or figure out stable funding, an intrepid stranger found the sign up form and shared it on a social media group for parents in Las Vegas.

“In 48 hours, we had 3,500 kids registered,” she recalls. “It was, like, ‘I guess we’re doing it now.’ But it all worked out beautifully.”

From there, the program quickly grew just by word of mouth. It was funded from June 2023 to July 2025 by a grant from the state’s Early Childhood Innovative Literacy Program. Participation fluctuates each month as kids are signed up or age out at 5 years old, but Helmick says it stays in the range of 18,000 or 19,000 thousand children spanning most of Clark County.

(Boulder City residents have a dedicated partner, Reading to Z, which currently serves fewer than 200 kids. Rural Clark County residents who live in Valley Electric Association’s service area can sign up for a program run by the energy cooperative’s charitable foundation.)

Over the summer, with the funding drying up, Storied stopped accepting new kids into the program.

“We didn’t want to disappoint families” by starting to send them books only to stop sending them a few months later, said Helmick. “One thing that sets (Imagination Library) apart is these books are sent directly to their home. I am a huge proponent of libraries. I’m there practically every week. But not everybody is able to do that. That is a barrier.”

Additionally, the books arrive addressed to the child.

“Getting it in the mail, the label with their name, it gives them ownership of the book,” says Helmick. “It makes a huge difference. I didn’t realize it until I heard it from families.”

On the inside of each book cover is a note from Imagination Library with tips for parents on conversations they can have with their child about the book, or questions they can ask to boost critical thinking and early reading skills.

“It isn’t just about the books and the words and the stories you’re reading with your kids,” said Helmick. “It’s sitting together side by side. It’s having conversations with them.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: info@nevadacurrent.com.

But when the manuscript for J.K. Rowling’s fourth book landed on his desk, Saylor sat up straight: It was huge. Bigger, more complex and narratively intricate than virtually any storybook ever aimed at children.

“I had to really think,” he said in a recent interview. “‘How are we going to typeset this book? How are we going to print a million copies? How are we going to get enough paper?’”

Bound and shipped, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire clocked in at a formidable 734 pages —  2.5 pounds. It was, of course, another in a series of massive hits that collectively spent atop The New York Times Bestseller List, ensnaring both children and adults, including most of Saylor’s friends.

He jokes that until the advent of Potter, “mostly no one cared that I worked in children’s books.” As excitement for the series grew, friends would ask him when the newest installment was due … and what happens next?

“Suddenly my job became important,” he said.

But the book and its six co-volumes now serve another purpose. They’re an eloquent proof point in an ongoing conversation in the publishing world: Are kids still reading books?

By the time Potter arrived, Saylor had lived through waves of predictions about the next extinction-level event to doom his industry. First it was TV, then video games. Before that it was radio and comic books, once derisively called “.”

“I’m only slightly jaded by these reports,” said Saylor, 65, “only because people are always predicting that kids are going to stop reading, and that the end of publishing is near.”

This time, it feels different.

Even as children’s publishing explodes with new talent and excitement from fans , new distractions and diversions are precipitously driving down the share of young people who read for fun. It’s a long-simmering problem that even the optimist Saylor acknowledges his industry must confront. 

‘The reading class’

Over the course of , from 1984 to 2023, the proportion of 13-year-olds who said they “never or hardly ever” read for fun on their own time has nearly quadrupled, from just 8% to 31%.

During that time, the percentage of middle-schoolers who read for fun “almost every day” has fallen by double digits, according to surveys conducted for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the test widely known as “the nation’s report card”: In 1984, 35% of middle school kids read for fun almost every day. By 2023, it was just 14%.

The phenomenon is part of a larger shift away from reading, research suggests. from the University of Florida and University College London found that daily reading for pleasure has dropped more than 40% among all age groups over the last two decades, “a sustained, steady decline” of about 3% per year.

Findings like these have sparked fears that, after more than a century of steadily expanding literacy, reading is devolving into an act relegated to a small group of elites, a “” that enjoys books while the rest of us see them as, in the words of scholar Wendy Griswold, “an increasingly arcane hobby.”

It’s a strange and thorny problem that in some sense seems contradictory: If you followed around a young person for a day, you’d likely see that she is reading constantly, but often in tiny fragments. In addition to school assignments, she’s taking in a ton of atomized content: alerts, text messages, memes and social media posts. All those bits add up for sure — one that the typical American reads the equivalent of a slim novel every day — but it isn’t the same as sitting down to read a book.

For young people, that’s having downstream effects, with NAEP reading scores slumping even before the pandemic and college professors increasingly reporting that students are uncomfortable tackling long reading assignments, let alone . 

Adam Kotsko, an assistant professor who teaches in the , a discussion-based classics program at North Central College in Naperville, Ill., recently that his students are intimidated by any reading longer than 10 pages. They seemingly emerge from readings of as little as 20 pages, he said, with “no real understanding.”

That has put pressure on professors to design courses with fewer readings: “I got to a point where I was cutting to the bone so much that there wasn’t even enough to discuss in some class sessions,” he said in an interview. “It seems like the habits of sustained reading are not being taught in the first place, in some cases, and they’re just being replaced with nothing.”

While COVID lockdowns took a toll on reading, the problem predates the pandemic. Many observers point to several possible culprits, including schools’ fraught approaches to reading instruction and two decades of test-driven K-12 school pedagogies, which often de-emphasize fiction in favor of short non-fiction passages. 

This has all taken place amid the dawn of smartphones — the iPhone turned 18 in June — and the rapid, unregulated rise of social media. So Kotsko and his colleagues are careful not to place the blame on students’ shoulders, but on a schooling and media ecosystem they can’t control.

“We are not complaining about our students,” he . “We are complaining about what has been taken from them.”

‘Continuous partial attention’ 

Gabriel Baez, 15, said phones are “a big distraction” at his South Florida charter school. As soon as teachers give students even a moment of downtime, the phones come out. Several teachers have begun requiring students to stash them in special pouches during class. “No distractions — that’s the only thing that I think helped a lot of us.”

A sophomore, Baez said he’s excited to read the science fiction thriller Ready Player One — a novel about, of all things, video games. He loved the 2018 Steven Spielberg movie, but said most days he’s overscheduled and barely able to find a minute to open a book. 

He’s in class from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., then does homework until 5 p.m. Dinner is at 6 p.m., then he studies a bit more. From 7 to 8 p.m. it’s soccer training, then bed so he can wake up early and do it all again. “I really don’t have time unless I decide to substitute something.”

For many young people, school is what gets in the way of books. 

Julia Goggin, 15, grew up reading books and loving them. She consumed the first few Harry Potter books unassisted in second grade and finished the series by fourth grade. She read a lot in middle school. 

In high school? Not so much. 

Like Baez, she’s heavily scheduled, running cross country in the fall and track and field in the winter. She’s in her school’s theater group, which means after-school rehearsals. Then homework. All of it leaves little time for reading anything aside from school assignments.

“If a school is too overbearing about forcing kids to read a lot, it makes them not want to read for fun because it’s not fun anymore,” she said. “Because school isn’t fun.”

A junior at a private high school in Wilmington, N.C., Goggin enjoys reading, but said her two younger brothers, eighth- and ninth-graders, don’t. “They never got into reading the same way I did when they were little. Since then, I guess, they’ve just played video games instead. That’s, like, all they do all day.”

Over the years, she has noticed a change in herself: As a kid, she read for relaxation. “But now all I want to do is scroll on TikTok, which is really bad,” she said with a laugh. “Now I have to be more conscious: Instead of going on my phone, I have to make the decision to read, which is different than before. When I was younger, it was just a default.”

To be sure, young people in the U.S. are reading words — lots of words. Perhaps more than ever.

In her most recent book, the literacy scholar noted that research from as far back as 2009 found that the average American reads what amounts to 34 gigabytes of information, or about 100,500 words, daily — from newspapers, magazines, books, games, messages and social media posts. For a bit of perspective, To Kill a Mockingbird, the Harper Lee classic, clocks in at about 100,000 words.  

While all that grazing certainly adds up, Wolf said, it’s “rarely continuous, sustained, or concentrated.” Rather, those 34 gigabytes represent “one spasmodic burst of activity after another.”

She said the fact that young people are reading all those words should comfort no one. “It means nothing.” The inability — or the unwillingness — to go deeper is what’s more important. “I think we have, really, a demise of deep reading, which for me is synonymous with critical thinking and empathy and the beauty of the reading act.”

While the 20th century saw literacy rates in the U.S. , technological developments such as movies, radio, TV and the Internet shifted modern culture away from reading and writing and toward visual and oral communication. One unintended result: at least two generations of young people who see books and reading as optional.

In the meantime, 65% of 8-to-12-year-olds now have an iPhone or other smartphone, according to by the market research group YPulse — and 92% of 8-to-12-year-olds are on social media, where they’re inundated with memes and short-form videos. 

Carl Hendrick, a Dublin-born professor at in Amsterdam and co-author of the 2024 book , accuses this generation’s parents of all but abdicating their responsibilities. 

He likens smartphones’ cognitive disruptions to the health effects of cigarettes, recalling that he grew up in Ireland at a time when smoking was ubiquitous. “You could smoke on buses — you could smoke on airplanes. You could smoke anywhere. We look back on that now with horror. And I think the same thing will be true of phones. We’ll go, ‘How did we allow 11-year-olds to go onto social media?’”

Hendrick, who has emerged internationally as a for improving classroom instruction via better understanding of learning science, said digital distractions are taking a toll, hijacking kids’ ability to engage their working memory on difficult texts and problems. That kind of laser-like focus, he said, is rapidly disappearing from our lives due to the “weaponized distraction” of social media. “It’s at an extraordinary level of sophistication to try and ,” he said.

In a recent newsletter, he laid down the gauntlet: “Solitude, slowness and sustained attention are no longer default states but acts of resistance. And as those conditions erode, so too does the possibility of the moral work that deep reading once quietly performed.”

While social media sites are the latest offenders, the phenomenon is hardly new. In 1998, the sociologist and computer researcher Linda Stone coined the term “” to capture the ways in which the first digital television networks allowed users to “connect and be connected” 24/7. She described a kind of early , or “fear of missing out.” But it also generated an artificial sense of “constant crisis,” a dopamine-generated high alert that’s hard to extinguish.

By contrast, Hendrick said, giving oneself over to reading deeply, whether it’s literature, philosophy or any complex text, offers something more: a rehearsal for real life, and for the patience we need to deal with one another. “It is a rehearsal in understanding before judging, listening before reacting,” he wrote recently. “This is not merely a virtue. It is a survival skill for a pluralistic, tolerant society.”

Ironically, one of the big drivers of the “whole language” movement was to foster a love of books and reading. But what educators missed at the time was that not teaching all kids to read proficiently at a young age meant reading became “more and more laborious” as they got older, since they couldn’t handle more complex texts, said Holly Lane, director of the .

“Nobody likes doing something that they’re not good at,” she said. “They may love the idea of reading, but they don’t like the act of reading.”

That, to many observers, is the original sin of the reading problem: the nation’s uneven commitment to teaching reading in ways we now know are more effective, such as explicit phonics instruction, which systematically teaches students the relationships between letters and sounds. Other, less effective methods, such as “whole language” instruction, emphasize immersion in texts rather than attention to isolated skills.

Like many educators who are pushing schools to embrace scientific approaches to literacy, Lane is hopeful about improvements in states like Louisiana and Mississippi. But she worries that progress at the elementary school level will be wasted if educators can’t help students at the secondary level develop the stamina to read longer, more difficult texts. Without that, she said, they won’t develop into readers. “When they leave high school, even if they can read, they don’t.”

Others worry that the rush to teach phonics without attention to solid background knowledge will continue to yield disappointing results. Phonics instruction is “trendy to care about right now,” said Boston University’s Elena Forzani, but it’s being enacted “in pretty superficial ways” that ignore student motivation. “We’re teaching kids to read in a content and motivational vacuum,” said Forzani, who directs the university’s programs.

In order to be able to read deeply, she said, students need many opportunities to enjoy, analyze, discuss and write about a text and the issues or problems it presents. But when she visits classrooms, she sees students reading short, disconnected “popcorn passages” with new topics every day, sometimes multiple times a day. 

While more and more kids are getting the explicit phonics instruction they need at an early age, the vast majority are learning to read “in a very isolated fashion — the focus is on the skills. And kids don’t care about that. They’re humans, like the rest of us. You only want to learn a new skill if it’s going to do something for you.”

‘Very good readers — and voracious readers’

When he visits schools to sign books, the Japanese-American writer and illustrator Kazu Kibuishi sees this in action. His popular nine-volume series of graphic adventure novels, about siblings who must find their kidnapped mother, finds a rapt audience of dedicated fans.

“I don’t really buy that kids are not reading anymore, because I see the opposite of that all the time,” he said in an interview. “I find kids to be very good readers — and voracious readers.”

But state-of-the-art digital entertainment has conditioned them to want more from their media. “Their minds are encoded to get information as fast as possible,” he said. “They have to turn that off when they go to school.”

Kibuishi’s publisher, Scholastic, has gone all in on graphic novels — Saylor, the creative director, even established an imprint . Teachers and librarians regularly tell him that kids read them avidly and repeatedly, “until they fall apart.”

Kibuishi said he creates comics that provide “high-quality, dense information” on every page, with fast-moving, high-stakes plotlines, rich illustrations and heightened emotions from his characters. His inspirations are the classic Marvel comics from the 1950s through the 1980s. “Big ideas were baked into small spaces,” he said.

Creators like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby “put a tremendous amount of life experience” into the slim stories, which he compares to little sponge dinosaurs that expand exponentially in water. 

A self-described average student, Kabuishi found his calling in storytelling after reading Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea in high school. “I read it pretty much in one sitting,” he said. “And when I was done with the book, I was transformed.”

The words “felt like pictures, and the book was so short,” he said. It was the first time reading didn’t feel like homework. “I felt like I was on a fishing boat. I felt like I had just experienced the rise and fall of this fisherman’s journey with this fish. And it was so poetic.” The little book “felt so much bigger than any other book than I’d been asked to read in class.”

The struggle to find such magic books is real, said Kelsey Clodfelter, a veteran English teacher at a Chicago public high school. She teaches students whose skills are often years behind where they should be by 10th or 11th grade. 

“When reading is hard for you, when it is literally difficult for you to decode words at the age of 16 or 17, reading is a very painful experience,” she said. “It’s also really embarrassing.”

Clodfelter, 35, who has a large said Common Core reforms of the past decade essentially replaced book-length readings with short non-fiction texts designed to prepare students for the kind of reading they’ll do “in the real world.” While it didn’t prohibit longer reading assignments, it may have made it harder for many teachers to assign appropriate books. 

And COVID, she said, “really did a number on us in terms of the transactional nature of school,” sending students the clear message that grades mattered more than learning, that standards in general were lower — and that nearly any effort was satisfactory.

The upshot, she said, is that she’s working harder all the time to get kids through reading assignments: She often swaps classic texts for contemporary memoirs, such as by actress Jeanette McCurdy. She invites students to read silently in class for 20-minute stretches. She creates book groups, and even sits with them and reads passages aloud.

“Students still won’t read the book,” she said.

‘Nobody can learn this much’

These days, even the most elite students are rebelling against reading.

, a longtime University of Virginia professor, said he has noticed lately that his students — “some of the most successful that the system produces” — not only complain about long readings but about “being asked to learn as much as I ask them to learn.”

Like Clodfelter, Willingham believes the pandemic scaled back expectations that have yet to be restored.

Each year since 1985, he has taught an introduction to cognitive psychology course that has changed little in 40 years. Students read about a chapter a week, averaging 30 pages or so. A careful reading, he said, would require about four hours of work.

“This is the first year since the pandemic [that] I’ve been hearing from students, ‘This is an unreasonable expectation. Nobody can learn this much.’”

A leading authority on cognitive science in the classroom, Willingham suggests to his students that they consider different study strategies. Long an advocate for the importance of broad background knowledge in reading instruction, Willingham said he’s “actually cheered and optimistic” that more educators are realizing the importance of a rich curriculum. 

But he worries about the time young people spend online — recent research suggests that they now spend most of their waking hours , he said.  

That may be the biggest irony embedded in this dilemma: The Internet has seemingly decimated young people’s desire to read books, offering them endless distractions and opportunities to do something — anything — else.

But dig a little deeper and you’ll find it is also doing a lot of heavy lifting, making it easier than ever for young people to find great books and connect to likeminded people who desperately want to talk about them.

Daphne LaPlante, 25, a video editor in Austin, Texas, posts videos to , and elsewhere proclaiming her love of books. She got her start on the app in 2021, in her final year of college.

Scrolling on the popular video app, she realized that other young people were also hungry for conversations about books. One of her favorites, the fantasy novel Six of Crows, was being made into a TV show, she recalled, “and I had nobody to talk to about it.” So she turned on her phone’s camera and hit record. Soon her videos began detailing what she’d read each month, and before long she was recommending books. After a while, publishers took note and started sending her advance copies of new titles.

LaPlante now has more than 40,000 followers on TikTok and over 30,000 on Instagram, and jokes that she has become a “micro-influencer” in the corner of the social media site known as . Born during the pandemic, it has become so influential that it has both crowned new hits and turned a few backlist books into . One industry analysis suggests that BookTok has changed behaviors: In 2021, the year it started gaining momentum, in the U.S. by 9%, to 825.7 million copies, the most since the research company NPD BookScan began tracking sales data in 2004.

“I think a big part of getting people into reading is community,” she said.

For the past year-and-a-half, LaPlante and a friend have also recorded a podcast called , about their love for 2010s-era young-adult dystopian fiction, epitomized by The Hunger Games and similar titles. “There are a lot of people, like me, who read those and were obsessed with them as a kid,” she said.

‘I don’t want to eat the f***ing salad’

If he’d had a mobile phone 25 years ago, Hendrick, the Irish educator, might well have been on BookTok, forcefully recommending his favorite literature, history and philosophy books. He recalled getting lost as a young man in The Great Gatsby, reading it cover-to-cover in two days. He has since read and taught it many times, but wonders: If he was 16 now, what incentive would he have to read such a book, given all the social forces in teens’ lives? With so much “easily attained dopamine” via social media, video games, movies and elsewhere, why would anyone go through the effort?

He thinks about what books must look like to his six-year-old daughter. “She can read,” he volunteered. “She’s really clever, but she just doesn’t want to because everything else is so ….” After considering it for a second, he finally said, “She’s in McDonald’s and I’m telling her to eat the salad, and she’s going, ‘I don’t want to eat the f***ing salad. There’s all these chicken nuggets. Why would I do that?’”

To bring back reading, he said, schools may very well have to do more than just improve instruction and reading stamina and find a few tasty books. They’ll have to get mobile phones out of classrooms, he said — actually, he thinks buying a phone for a 10-year-old “should be outlawed.” Many states and schools, to their credit, are getting the message and for much of the school day. But they may also have to consider a back-to-basics approach that treats reading as an indicator of public health.

“With cars, we mandated seat belts,” he said. “We mandated speed limits. It may be the case that we need to say, ‘Kids have just got to read for an hour in silence on their own. That’s just it — in the same way you’ve got to eat certain vegetables.’”

In 20 years, Hendrick predicted, we’ll likely discover that reading and, more broadly, deep cognitive focus, offer the same kinds of benefits as exercising or a balanced diet. We’ll look back on this decade, he said, with its easily attained dopamine, its endless mental chicken nuggets and distractions, and realize, “We were weaponizing mental health problems.”

A quarter-century ago, Hendrick recalled, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the novelist Norman Mailer was unequivocal when asked about their significance. “He said, ‘It’s going to take us 10 years to figure this out. Call in the novelists.’ His thing was, we need to get the writers in to make sense of this.”

People, in other words, need books. No matter how advanced our digital media have become, nothing can replace the depth of understanding they afford. “For me, when I read Shakespeare or The Sound and the Fury or [James] Joyce, I was finding out what it meant to be alive,” said Hendrick. “My struggles were the struggles of other people. And I was learning about ethics and morality. Where are we going to end up without that?”

was originally reported by Nadra Nittle of .��

Jennifer Siebel Newsom, first partner of California, doesn’t mince words: “When so many things that support working families, children and older adults are being ripped away by this administration in order to help offset billionaire tax cuts, it is our duty to raise up and support these critical public resources.”

It’s a fiery critique of Washington’s priorities — one that has led her to expand the annual summer she began four years ago. The club includes a recommended list of children’s books available at nearly 900 libraries statewide and support for library programs to attract more youth. On occasion, Siebel Newsom and local authors appear at book club events, such as in June, when they dropped by the Altadena Library after the establishment revived its summer reading program following the catastrophic Eaton Fire in January. For the first time, Siebel Newsom’s book club will take place all year long, she announced recently.

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Book clubs are critical interventions against “the summer slide” — the brain drain that hits kids when school’s out, causing them to lose months of academic skills and scramble to catch up come fall. Amid what experts describe as a nationwide , Siebel Newsom’s club, formed in collaboration with the California State Library, urges young people to disconnect from the internet and enter the “third space” that is the library — one where they encounter community members from all walks of life.

But there’s one problem: Libraries themselves are under siege. The this spring in a broader attack on public institutions wrapped up with efforts to purge diversity, equity and inclusion from public life.

“At a time when beloved, long-standing public institutions, like our libraries and our parks, are being outright attacked by the administration in D.C., we’re working hard in California to uplift and protect them,” Siebel Newsom said.

None of the 20 titles in Siebel Newsom’s book club has faced censorship — yet. Their themes, however, include positive girl representation, environmental leadership and youth mental health, all of which have been fodder for the culture wars that have played out in the nation’s classrooms.

There’s author Jen Wang’s “,” a book for high school students about a youth’s fight against climate change. Also on the list is JaNay Brown-Wood’s “,” about children learning that planting a garden rarely goes as planned. Aphids, anyone?

In addition to her book club and the Trump’s administration’s attacks against libraries, Siebel Newsom spoke to The 19th about how to respond when kids struggle to read, toxic internet culture and the fact that her governor husband is also a children’s book author.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.��

Nadra Nittle: Why was it important for you to launch this book club? 

Jennifer Siebel Newsom: I started the book club in 2021 to help get more kids and families reading and in our public libraries, especially over the summer. Studies show that students who participate in summer reading programs have improved educational outcomes, and in fact, early literacy is linked to success throughout life — from academics, to earning power, to mental and physical health. And now, more than ever, books offer our kids a much-needed mental health break from the often toxic online world.

This year, we’re expanding the summer book club into a year-round program to encourage kids and families to read more and visit our public libraries year round. In addition to a list of incredible reads for preschool through high school-aged kids, the book club includes investments in library programs that help get more families into libraries — volunteer projects in library gardens, digital storytelling workshops and even library lunches.

The nation’s children are reportedly experiencing a literacy crisis. How does your book club address it?

Helping connect children to great reads available for free check-out and helping get more families into our amazing libraries is a small step to help address a much larger problem around early literacy. Between 2011-2022, California had one of the largest gains in fourth-grade reading levels. However, the state has more work to do to ensure that all kids, no matter their ZIP code, have a chance to read and thrive.

This June, the governor announced the , outlining new investments to boost student reading achievement. In California, we’ve made big investments in education: after-school and summer school programs, free universal transitional kindergarten so all 4-year-olds can start school, and universal school meals, ensuring all kids get at least two meals a day — including through the Farm to School initiative, which ensures that healthier and locally sourced real foods are getting to nearly 50 percent of our schools statewide.

Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote a 2021 children’s book that draws on his experience with dyslexia, “Ben and Emma’s Big Hit.” He’s also said that two of your children have fallen behind in reading previously. Any advice for families navigating similar issues? 

Yes, absolutely: Read to your children every night and as often as you can and cultivate a love of books and stories. Also, notice if they are struggling at all and get them screened early, as early literacy is such a critical component in educational success and success throughout the span of a life. I am so proud that thanks in large part to my husband’s work and advocacy on this issue, as of this year, California is ensuring that all kindergarten, first and second grade students are annually screened in school for reading difficulties, including dyslexia.

How do the titles chosen for the book club this year stand out?

Well, for starters, librarians across California helped curate the list, and they really are experts on what books are irresistible to kids of all ages. This year’s list also centers around themes of positive role models for girls, environmental stewardship and kids’ mental health. Those issues are close to my own heart, too, as someone whose work has focused so much on women and girls empowerment, improving our climate and food supply through initiatives, and building family and children’s mental health resilience.

For example, “,” by Mariama J. Lockington, is aimed at middle schoolers and follows 13-year-old Andi’s journey as one of the few Black girls in a sea of White faces at music camp. It is just a beautiful coming-of-age story about belonging and the friendships that heal us, following the loss of loved ones early in life. It’s also a love letter to music! Another wonderful book for high schoolers struggling with the fears and frustrations of climate change is “,” which follows one teen’s attempt to right the wrongs of climate destruction by building a secret cabin in the wilderness of California.

How have federal cuts affected funding for California’s libraries, and what has the state done in response?

Sadly, we live in a time when public resources we all used to agree on — our libraries, our beautiful state parks — are under attack from the administration in D.C. California’s federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant for library funding was Through legal challenges, however, some — though not all — of the funding has been restored. California is helping to protect our libraries and parks in our budget, including by helping make these public treasures more accessible to all.

The books on your club’s list haven’t faced censorship, though some in recent years. How has Gov. Newsom addressed these efforts?

I think we can look at history and see that civilizations and governments that banned books were never headed in the right direction. If anything, now more than ever, we need more access to books and more educational freedom. And children, in particular, need to see the world in all of its colors and learn tolerance and how different perspectives and kinds of people make up a shared common humanity.

In California, the governor in 2023 that prevents “book bans” in schools, censorship of instructional materials and strengthens California law requiring schools to provide all students access to textbooks that teach about California’s diverse communities.

You mentioned books offering a “mental health break” from the toxic internet. I recently wrote about the . Do you have any thoughts about this?

So many thoughts! It is a continuing focus for my film work. [Siebel Newsom is a documentary filmmaker.] And looking back on my own childhood, diving into books and the comfort of our public library almost certainly served as “alternative programming” for a girl coming of age in the largely sexist media culture of the time. The misogynistic pre-internet culture I was trying to escape from as a kid seems almost quaint compared to what kids face today. But this is why I think that the act of reading — and access to libraries — may be even more critical for young people today than it has ever been.

Books spur a lifelong curiosity about others and the world and systems one is born into. They can offer a different perspective and show one the strength of the human spirit to rise above and carve out one’s own unique voice. The books I read as a kid created a lifelong love of the transformative power of storytelling, which has fueled me throughout my career in filmmaking and advocacy.

What was your favorite childhood book, and do you think it would still resonate with kids today?

“The Little House” series was the earliest one that had an outsized impact on me, especially with the stories so grounded in a young girl’s perspective. I do think they are still wonderful and relevant and know that today they are taught with historical context and to encourage critical thinking too, so that kids can understand the full picture of that moment in our history.

This story was originally published on The 19th.

Bane, an English teacher at Alliance Susan & Eric Smidt Technology High School, drew from her deep belief in the power of reading to help students and teachers reclaim a sense of stability by launching a book drive to rebuild classroom and home libraries lost in the fires. 

Since her initial call for book donations on and only days after the wildfires started to spread, more than 14,000 new and gently used books have poured in from donors across the world. 

Teachers, parents and students can books with no set deadline or expiration date. 

The book initiative has also drawn widespread recognition, including from Congressman Jimmy Gomez, who Bane for her dedication to rebuilding affected classrooms. Gomez even joined volunteers in sorting and distributing books to impacted families at one of the local events. 

A longtime educator with nearly 20 years of experience, Bane has also been part of the literary world since 2019, first as a ghostwriter and now as a debut author with a YA novel, “,” set to release this summer. The writing community, which has long supported Bane’s work, quickly rallied behind her mission. Notable writers, including Veronica Roth, Emily A. Craig, Dahlia Adler and Julian Winters, contributed books and advanced copies to help restore classroom collections. 

Bane spoke with digital producer Trinity Alicia about the book drive initiative, the role of reading in times of natural disaster and how books can serve as powerful tools for healing and restoration.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

How did the book drive idea come to life? I’m curious about some of the conversations you may have had with others and even yourself — and how they shaped the idea.

My husband and I dropped off some necessities at different donation sites, and once those core essentials were taken care of, my mind immediately went to the teachers. I saw all these pictures of schools that had burned down … and now, those libraries are gone. I thought about my students, especially the kids who come into my classroom at lunch to read. Their books are their prized possessions, and I couldn’t help but wonder how they would feel if those sources of comfort were suddenly taken away.

While others were doing an amazing job meeting essential needs, I realized this could be a place where I could make a difference. I was about 2.8 miles from the nearest evacuation zone so beyond being nervous for our own home — there was a tense night where we thought we might need to evacuate — I knew that this was something I could do right now.

I posted my first initial post on Threads and Bluesky shortly after the wildfires started and said if anyone had lost books, we would get them books and to not worry because the offer didn’t expire. It started gaining some initial traction, and someone suggested creating a Google form. I thought, “as a teacher teacher, I love a Google form!” So, I made one and when I woke up, it had around 100,000 views. 

I nudged my husband and said, “Hey, so our house is about to become box city,” and he’s honestly been my first recruit in this process, helping me make deliveries, sort the books and even going with me to the post office to get book donations. 

When I needed a classroom library, I created a project on Donors Choose and the first person to donate was a young adult author. The writing and author community has been incredibly supportive of me … sending advance copies of books and whatever extra books they had around. It allowed me to build out a library for my students, giving them the resources they desperately needed. I knew that if I reached out this time, this community would show up for these teachers and readers, just as they have for me and my students for years.

How has the process been since receiving book donations?

The response has been quite a far reach, much farther than I was expecting. I’ve gotten multiple books and boxes from overseas like Australia, so that’s been really cool. It’s been quite a far reach, way farther than I was expecting. I thought only a handful of LA authors I knew would show up, but they came in a big way. I didn’t expect my P.O. box to be literally overrun, but I’m very happy that it is. I’ve been trying to manage the volume as best as I can.

Some teachers … have told me they’re retiring in June and asked if they could give their classroom libraries to someone when they retire. So far, we’ve distributed over 14,000 book donations.

We’ve been accepting books for all ages. For example, there was a preschool that burned down, and we dropped off three big boxes just to get them started, with plans to bring more. Those boxes primarily contained picture books and early chapter books. 

I believe so strongly in literacy and in getting kids a variety of books — whether it’s a portal into a different world or a character going through tough times like they are. 

When I first started teaching, I’d get boxes of classic literature, and while I love the classics, I know that handing a kid a book like “War and Peace” won’t help them love reading. I wanted students to have books that made them say, “Yeah, this is something I can do.” This was the same route I took with curating donations for teachers and classrooms across LA.

In your experience, how do books and reading provide stability and normalcy during chaotic times, especially for young people who may feel displaced due to the fires?

I remember looking at the books I read when my mom passed away. I’ve held onto some of the books in my personal library because there are memories attached to books. A book is a small yet significant thing that serve as anchors of what your life had before then you get to then rebuild around. It’s not going to feel normal for a long time, but I hope we’re giving people those anchors through these books. It’s not about the material things; it’s about giving them that comfort and sense of normalcy.

What has been the most rewarding part of running this book drive? Have you connected with any specific individuals or families that made this experience feel particularly impactful?

One of the best things has been seeing how many people are willing to come together and support each other … I knew I wouldn’t fully understand the grief that others were experiencing … I hadn’t lost my home or my school, but I knew I could be there for them … to help them get through it. Whether I’m sending one book for comfort or three boxes of books, I just want them to know this is one thing they don’t have to worry about and that we’ll take care of it.

There was one teacher I dropped off boxes for, and she just asked if she could hug me. Then she gave me cookies, and I thought, “That’s such a teacher thing to do.” She was taking the cookies to families in the neighborhood, and it made me feel grateful to be a teacher and to be in education. 

The idea of “resilience” often comes up in disaster recovery. How do you see literacy and books playing a role in building resilience for young readers in these communities? 

I teach in an area where over 90% of my students qualify for free or reduced lunch, and many of them are going to be the first in their families to go to college. The topic of resilience comes up a lot, and I’ve often been asked how I teach my students resilience and grit. The truth is, my students don’t need to be taught resilience. They have been resilient their entire lives and have faced challenges I can’t even imagine. 

If anything, they’ve taught me resilience, and I’m in awe of how they continue to persevere. When this situation happened I thought of the students in my classroom reading books after everything they’ve gone through, finding an escape. Some of my kids don’t get enough sleep because they don’t have a bedroom, and some work multiple jobs late into the night before coming to a full school schedule. These are the kids who disappear into books. 

Congratulations on your debut novel coming out! How do you balance civic duties as an author and a teacher?

Everything that had seemed so important with the book just didn’t feel as important anymore in light of everything else going on. It’s not that the book isn’t important to me — I’m incredibly excited and proud of it, but it’s had to take a backseat to this work because … this is the most vital and urgent. I’m so grateful for the way people have been responding, and it’s been overwhelming in the best way.

What does teaching reading in Los Angeles mean to you? 

One of my proudest moments came when a former student messaged me after seeing someone post about the book drive. They wanted to donate, saying, “Your class is the one that made me love reading, so I want to pass this on.” I was so happy. But I know that wouldn’t have happened without a library, without books to choose from. If they don’t have access to those books, they don’t build that confidence. 

Sixteen tables, two seats to a table, all in rows, face front “because that’s where the instruction is coming from,” he said.

About the only technology in the room: small handheld whiteboards, dry-erase pens and small stacks of index cards. The walls are almost entirely bare. And phones are out of the question, stowed in backpacks before class.

It’s intentional, said Harvard, who teaches Advanced Placement Psychology at James Clemens High School in Madison, Ala., a suburb of Huntsville.

Over the past decade, he has become something of an expert in focus, memory, forgetting and distraction.

Harvard has put these principles into his first book, published last week, titled, appropriately, . 

Harvard hopes the book will offer practical advice to teachers on how to use the principles of cognitive science to create better learning environments.

The time is right for a new book about attention, said , a professor of English at the City University of New York and founding director of CUNY’s Futures Initiative. She said she’s excited to see Harvard’s work.

Davidson noted several indicators of rising inattention, from falling reading scores to the growth of media misinformation and the higher prevalence of young people who say they’re with traditional education. 

“I think people are really seeing that what it means to pay attention is important,” said Davidson, who wrote 2011’s . 

Harvard mostly focuses on more intentional teaching methods that reduce distractions and help students manage the vast amount of content they’re called upon to remember —  often called “.”

These ideas are decidedly not on tap in most teacher preparation programs, said Harvard, who earned his master’s degree in education in 2006. His coursework contained “nothing on cognition — there was nothing on the brain, nothing on how we learn.”

‘Why don’t I already know about this?’

It wasn’t until 2016, a decade after graduate school, that Harvard happened upon the now-defunct Twitter account “The Learning Scientists.” In plain language, educational psychologists from around the world laid out the basics of cognitive science for educators. 

Harvard was gobsmacked. Instead of just shooting in the dark, he finally saw research on the effectiveness of various learning strategies. 

He found himself instantly hooked and soon for the group. That led to his own website, which eventually became the popular blog .

Nearly a decade later, he’s traveling the world, speaking at conferences about strategies that affect students’ ability to channel ideas into long-term memory. He’s lost count of how many times he’s had to inform audiences that — humans can’t consciously focus on more than one thing at a time.

Harvard subscribes to something he calls the “SAR method,” an accessible way for students and teachers to think about memory. When they’re about to start a lesson, he tells students that memory follows a three-step process: Sense, Attend and Rehearse. 

“You can hear your teacher,” he said. “You can see your teacher. You can see the board. You can sense it. But are you attending to it? Are you paying attention to it, or are there things getting in your way? Are you trying to multitask? Is the person sitting next to you talking?”

Once a student attends to the material, the rehearsal happens. That’s perhaps the most important and tricky part. In the book, he likens it to an athlete’s ability to learn a new routine. If he or she doesn’t rehearse before the big game, he writes, “that would not be a good recipe for success on the playing field.”

Rehearsing in the classroom can take the form of a multiple-choice quiz, a discussion or a project. The key is to access the material from memory and use it appropriately.

Accordingly, he begins many classes by simply asking students to review what came the day, the week or even the month before. Retrieving those memories, he said, makes them more likely to be there the next time the brain goes looking for them.

Another principle he employs is “wait time.” When most teachers ask a question, they’ll settle for the first student with her hand up. But Harvard adds a step, ordering students to retrieve their handheld whiteboard. Before anyone can answer out loud, everyone must attempt an answer in writing.

“Now they’re committed to thinking,” he said. “They’re committed to writing something down. It seems like such a simple thing, but when you make the students do that, you give them time to think.”

As they’re studying, he’ll often give students a kind of slow-motion, three-stage assessment he calls “Brain-Book-Buddy” to offer a more honest take on what they actually know.

In the first assessment, they answer a series of questions from memory. Then they fill in the answers they couldn’t remember with the help of their notes. In the final test, they can talk to classmates.

“They end up getting all the right answers, but they’re also acutely aware of what they actually knew, what they knew with their notebook, and what they had to ask their buddies, their peers, about,” he said. “It’s an ongoing conversation of them thinking about their thinking.”

‘Attention Contagion’

Lately Harvard has been evangelizing most eagerly about an emerging topic in cognitive science known as “.” Only a handful of small-scale studies exist on the topic, but Harvard says the evidence is compelling.

In the research, students pose as attentive or non-attentive classmates, and researchers judge how well actual subjects attend to lessons in their presence — how many notes they take and their performance on post-lesson quizzes. The results suggest that seatmates’ behaviors have a profound effect: When a student is surrounded by inattentive peers, the behaviors are contagious. It works the other way as well: If a student is surrounded by peers who are visibly paying attention, they’re more attentive. 

had undergraduates watch a video lecture with a “classmate” posing as someone who either seemed attentive — leaning forward and taking notes — or slouched, shifting his gaze, glancing at the clock and taking infrequent notes. Researchers found that being seated behind these classmates had a profound effect: Subjects sitting near attentive students took significantly more notes and rated themselves as being on task. They also scored more than five points higher on a multiple-choice quiz.

Other studies have replayed the dynamic, with similar results. The findings even hold true for students observing one another in a Zoom-like virtual environment, where all that’s visible is a student’s face staring into a webcam.

In other words, Harvard notes, attention and inattention can actually pass through the Internet.

He considers the findings especially resonant because the “contagion” doesn’t come from obviously bad behavior like yelling, interrupting a teacher or staring at a phone. It’s stuff that he and most other teachers would typically let slide.

“They’re just slouching in their chair,” he said. “They’re just not taking notes. They’re gazing out the window.”

What the studies show is that attention operates by a kind of quiet osmosis, in some cases literally felt but not seen.

, the researcher who has pioneered this work, emphasized the “non-distracting” nature of the inattentiveness in his studies, noting that it’s “driven by more than just peer distraction.” Peers can detect these inattentiveness cues, he told The 74, even via tiny changes in the case of the online environment, suggesting that students “pay attention to their peers on webcam — even when the video thumbnails are quite small.”

More data needed

In an email, Forrin cautioned that attention contagion ”has not yet been studied in real classrooms,” only in laboratory settings with video lecturers. But he said he’s confident that attention and inattention “can spread between students during lectures,” and that this spread affects learning. Students “are attuned to their peers’ motivation to learn” and pay more attention when they infer that others have strong learning goals. They pay less attention when they sense weak or no goals. 

He suggested that teachers do their best to cultivate these goals in their students. They should also let students choose their own seats so they’re not consistently sitting near inattentive peers.

But he said more data are needed to determine whether these phenomena occur in real classrooms, especially with live teachers and different levels of student motivation.

Davidson, the CUNY scholar, said research on topics similar to attention contagion go back all the way to , who at the turn of the 20th century was studying the social aspects of “vivid” thoughts, distraction and focus. More recently, she noted, the psychologist Danie Kahneman, who helped establish what has become behavioral economics, studied .

And of course TV producers who pioneered the “canned laughter” of laugh tracks on early TV knew that suggestions of an engaged audience make viewers respond in kind. 

But perhaps the greatest experts in attention contagion, Davidson said, are stand-up comedians — she interviewed several for her 2011 book, and they told her that visibly bored audience members are “the kiss of death” in live performance. “People fall asleep in the front row, and pretty soon they’re falling asleep in the whole theater,” she said.

Harvard, for his part, is convinced that attention contagion in the classroom is real — and he tells students about the research.

“It’s powerful for students to hear that simply being inattentive can distract someone else from learning,” he said.

More broadly, he said, cognitive psychology has simplified his approach to teaching, allowing him to focus on proven strategies that are neither traditional nor progressive. 

The most cynical person, he said, would probably say his classroom is “too traditional. But I’m not thinking, ‘Do I want a traditional or a progressive classroom?’ When I designed it, I’m thinking, ‘How can I put my students in the best situation where they can pay attention to what they need to pay attention [to] and be distracted the least?’ That’s everything that I’m thinking about, and nothing else.”

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear an appeal from a group of Montgomery County parents challenging a school system policy that does not let them opt their lower elementary school children out of classes that use LGBTQ+ books.

Now literacy advocates in New York, where Parton’s Imagination Library is available in 79 locations, want Gov. Kathy Hochul to allocate funds to take the program statewide, reports . Legislation creating a state partnership with the program, like California Gov. Gavin Newsom , would ensure that books reach more children and lifts some of the financial burden off nonprofit organizations.

While Parton’s Dollywood Foundation covers overhead costs, it’s community organizations like the United Way that pay for postage and the actual costs of the books.

Twelve states currently contribute funds and have programs that reach all of their counties. Additionally, nine states are in the process of expanding their programs and one, New Mexico, will , according to Imagination Library. 

In August, Parton of the program in Tennessee, where it began almost 30 years ago.

In Ohio, a partnership state, the nonprofit Literacy Cooperative in Cleveland conducts an annual survey to measure the impact on families. “We ask lots of questions, but what I zero in on is, ‘Does your child want to read more since getting these books?’ ” CEO Robert Paponetti told , a local news site. 

“The overwhelming answer is yes.”

We asked The 74 staff to offer up their latest recommendations, hoping that it might provide those looking for a good read during the cold winter months some engaging options. 

Here are 11 books we enjoyed this year:

1.

The best decision I ever made was to pursue my love of writing. Second to that is my love of art. I travel around the world with my sketchbook, inspired by architecture, sculptures and paintings from across the globe. 

That’s why I was so excited to read Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton. The opening pages of this incredible book were among the best written in the history of nonfiction books. It reads like a high-level master’s thesis — which sounds like an insult, but actually is not. It was so incredibly informative. 

Thornton takes the reader around the world to see where art is made and sold. It was fascinating. I’ve never read a more detailed account of this behind-the-scenes activity than the one Thornton provided. I would love to read this book again. —Jo Napolitano, Senior Reporter

2.

When President Barack Obama his annual summer reading list, I pay very close attention — especially to the fiction he chooses. Just days before I found The God of the Woods by Liz Moore on Obama’s list, a friend had touted it as meeting my two book qualifications: it had to be an engaging page turner and it had to grab me on page one — a nod to all my years in New York City tabloid journalism!

The God of the Woods is a combo mystery, thriller and family story set in the summer of 1975 at a camp in upstate New York when Barbara Van Laar — the daughter of the wealthy family that owns the camp — has gone missing. This isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared — Barbara’s older brother, Bear, also vanished more than a decade before, never to be found.

The search for Barbara uncovers many secrets and sends shockwaves through the wealthy family, the camp, and the blue-collar community that serves them. The characters, particularly Barbara, her parents and camp director T.J., are well-developed and compelling. The plot is full of twists and turns, just like the upstate mountain range where the story is set. I don’t want to say too much other than what my friend said: “Probably a little too good a read if you’ve got a kid at sleepaway camp!” —JoAnne Wasserman, Executive Editor

3.

I am a huge fan of journalist and historian Garrett Graff and last summer, I spent a lot of warm evenings on my deck with his Watergate: A New History.

I have vivid memories of watching the 1973 hearings with my parents as a child and of going to see the film version of All the President’s Men a couple of years later. The journalism bug bit me early. 

Despite its heft, Graff’s book, published in February 2022, is a page-turner. A half-century after Richard Nixon’s resignation, co-conspirators have served their sentences, sold memoirs and died — freeing an avalanche of information that was unavailable to reporters at the time. 

Without the pressure of breaking news deadlines, Graff turns minor players in the conspiracies, cover-ups and investigations into compelling characters. One after another, they come to grips with the depth of the wrongdoing — only to be stunned by new evidence of the president’s involvement. 

Especially riveting is the last third of the book, where Congress, cabinet members and Nixon intimates wrestle with questions that are not so removed from today’s headlines: Whether a sitting president can withhold records from the highest courts in the land, how to orchestrate hearings so that they create a narrative understandable to the public and whether it was possible to shield the dignity of the office from the depravity of its occupant. —Beth Hawkins, Senior Writer and National Correspondent

4.

For 2024, I committed to reading only literature by Black authors and it has challenged me to explore new genres. As a first-time mystery reader, I found Brendan Slocumb’s 2022 The Violin Conspiracy to be a captivating and accessible introduction.

The Violin Conspiracy focuses on main character Ray — an honest and passionate Black violinist who discovers a priceless violin connected to his enslaved ancestors. When he chooses to play the instrument during performances, Ray unexpectedly rises to fame as if the violin is a good luck charm. In the book, this is seen as a remarkable feat, reflecting the reality that Black musicians make up just 2.4% of American orchestra members, according to a . 

When Ray’s violin is stolen, his relentless search to recover it consumes his time and takes precedence over preparing for performances. As he navigates both the quest for his instrument and the systemic obstacles Black musicians face in a predominantly white field, Slocumb paints a vivid picture of the personal and professional challenges Ray endures. Though the book contains triggering elements, such as racial slurs and references to slavery, they can serve as crucial elements to understanding the racial issues Slocumb chooses to explore — adding depth to Ray’s struggle with his own identity in the classical music scene.

For those with a personal connection to music — like myself, having played instruments including the violin, for the majority of my life — the novel resonates on a profound level. It felt as though I was part of Ray’s global audience, with the power of his music transcending how I processed the racial tensions at play within the story. Slocumb’s seamless intertwinement of suspense, arts and culture has set a high bar for the rest of my literary journey. —Trinity Alicia, Digital Producer

5.

I deeply cherish the fact that the majority of my reading takes place with my children curled up around me, which on its own is pretty sweet. One of their most requested books is Shel Silverstein’s 1981 A Light in the Attic, or what they like to call “funny poem book.”&�Բ�����;

A Light in the Attic is not only filled with whimsical poetry but is also accompanied by illustrations drawn by Silverstein himself. 

A few of my children’s favorite snippets include “mustard ice cream,” “polar bears in Frigidaires,” “Meehoos” and “Exactlywatts.” Some of the poems in the collection are pretty vicious like Who Ordered the Broiled Face? and Skin Stealer, but I think those tend to go over their heads. 

My daughter has been extremely interested in one poem called Ladies First! It features a character called Pamela Purse, whom my daughter calls Kamala Harris. Proclaiming “ladies first!” does not always work out well for Pamela, but in some way I think it is inspiring my daughter to understand her own power and how to advocate for herself — except around cannibals. 

Their grandpa was a poet, who probably preferred Robert Frost to Silverstein, but I’m sure he would have been proud to witness their fascination with the art form. —Eamonn Fitzmaurice, Art and Technology Director

6.

Colson Whitehead was inspired to write The Nickel Boys after reading a news article about archaeology students at the University of South Florida unearthing the bodies of dozens of boys who had been tortured and raped and then buried in unmarked graves on the grounds of The Dozier School for Boys.  

His novel revolves around fictional character Elwood Curtis, a Black boy being raised by his grandmother in the Jim Crow-era South. Elwood is a good student and hard worker who gets selected to attend classes at a local college. But when he is unfairly arrested and sentenced to a juvenile reform school called the Nickel Academy in Tallahassee, Florida, his dreams are dashed and his life takes a decidedly dark turn. 

At the Nickel Academy, Ellwood is separated from the only family he knows and subjected to strict disciplinary actions and severe beatings. He forges a friendship during his time at the Nickel Academy, an alliance that helps both he and his companion endure the racism and abuse they experience at the hands of the school’s staff. 

Whitehead’s novel is gut-wrenching and beautifully written. It shines a light on one of America’s darkest periods and depicts the scars that are left on people who have endured one injustice after another. —Nicole Ridgway, Editor in Chief

7.

If you’re an Emily in Paris fan, you may have seen the multi-talented Ashley Park singing the song Beautiful Ruins in Rome this season. I can’t help but think it was a sly nod to one of my favorite recent reads, Jess Walter’s 2012 bestseller by the same name that uses the filming of the epic 1960’s flop Cleopatra in Rome as a key plot device.

I am all there for books that satirize Hollywood. This one is a leading example of the insidery, delicious industry send-ups that make Beautiful Ruins such a fun, witty read — including an appearance by the beautiful ruin himself: Richard Burton. 

But the heart of the book is the enduring love and friendship between an American starlet and a wistful Italian innkeeper and what happens to them over the course of five decades after their forced parting. And speaking of multi-talented, Walter is also a former Spokane, Washington, newspaper reporter who wrote a definitive account of the 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge. —Kathy Moore, Executive Editor

8.

The Bee Sting was by far one of my favorite reads of this year. In Paul Murray’s tragicomic saga, the Barnes family is definitely in trouble. 

Dickie’s car business is going under and to cope, he’s spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker. His wife Imelda is engrossed in selling her jewelry on eBay while barely dodging the attention of a local farmer. Their teenage daughter Cass is binge drinking, and their 12-year-old son PJ is plotting an escape from home. 

As the Barnes family grapples with their mounting problems, they face the question of whether they can still rewrite their story and find a happy ending.

Murray is a master in plot with the ability to brilliantly weave together the narratives of seemingly unrelated characters and moments in time. The shifting perspectives brought depth and nuanced character development and the writing was simultaneously crisp and beautiful. This, paired with the surprising and complex ending, has kept the book on my mind since finishing it. —Amanda Geduld, Staff Writer

9.

The Earthseed series by one of my favorite authors, Octavia Butler, transcends the typical sci-fi label given by fans and literary experts. Butler’s work is genre blurring, dealing with race, sexism, religion and social commentary. 

Published in 1993, the first book Parable of the Sower is set in a post-apocalyptic America where climate change and a kind of civil war feels prescient in today’s politically divided landscape. And guess when this novel takes place? 2025!

The novel follows Lauren Olamina, a young Black woman who can feel the physical and emotional pain of others. After a violent attack on her town she leads survivors and other people they meet along the way to find a safe place to live. Over the course of the story, Olamina forms a religion called Earthseed, which teaches “God is Change” and that humanity must spread out into the Galaxy to seed new worlds.

Parable of the Sower has earned multiple accolades, including being named the . The book has since been adapted into an opera and a graphic novel. 

Its 1998 sequel Parable of the Talents follows Olimina and daughter Larkin Olamina/Asha Vere. Set in 2032, Olamina establishes an utopian community called Acorn, centered around Earthseed, but things take a dark and brutal turn.

While Butler published a ton of great short stories and novels, this series is one of her best. I can’t recommend it enough. —James Fields, Video Director

10. 

Victor LaValle’s taut, disturbing novella The Ballad of Black Tom begins with a curious dedication: “For H.P. Lovecraft, with all my conflicted feelings.” It suggests the book’s dual purpose: to pay homage to one of the fathers of modern horror while also holding a funhouse mirror up to the legacy of one of the more notorious racist authors in any genre.  

LaValle, who is Black, sets his mystery in Jazz Age New York. Charles Thomas Tester, a hustler who walks the streets of Harlem with an empty guitar case, is trying to make ends meet and care for his father, “a man who’d been dying ever since his wife of twenty-one years expired.” The call to deliver a mysterious yellow book to a shadowy woman in Queens ultimately brings him in contact with a conspiracy of wealthy families who are quite literally playing with the nature of reality.  

LaValle has a lot of fun turning Lovecraftian tropes on their head. For Lovecraft, New York, with its immigrants, vice and crime, was the epitome of everything wrong with the Modern Age. In setting his story there, viewed through the eyes of a Black man, LaValle lovingly evokes Harlem in the morning as being like “a single drop of blood inside an enormous body that was waking up.”

The book was recommended to me by a friend who knows I’m not a fan of horror. But with the exception of one exceptionally bloody (but necessary) scene, The Ballad of Black Tom plays more with eerie psychological suspense than cheap thrills and gore. 

While many other books grapple with Lovecraft’s tortured legacy — Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country was turned into an uneven series on HBO — LaValle’s work was justly lauded, the 2016 Shirley Jackson award for best novella. It deals with timeless themes of identity and the relationship between fathers and sons. But especially in this post-election season, its meditation on conspiratorial thinking, violence and xenophobia feels frighteningly fresh. —Andrew Brownstein, Executive Editor

11.

Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer was my favorite read of the year. Yes, it’s wonky and not exactly a beach read, but Dederer, a Seattle-area critic, has written what is probably the most complete exploration ever of the complex relationship between art, its creators and its consumers. 

She directly confronts the sometimes uncomfortable truths about our beloved artists (Woody Allen, Miles Davis, Roman Polanski, Pablo Picasso, Wagner … do I need to go on?) who have had messy, sometimes criminally messy, personal lives. While they’re mostly men, she also offers up a critique of women artists (Doris Lessing, Joni Mitchell) who have made problematic personal decisions for their art.

The key question: Can we still love the art but not the artist? 

Dederer navigates her own experiences as a fan and a writer while staring down our often contradictory relationship with problematic figures. She offers a helpful analogy, suggesting that we should see our favorite art, music, poetry, writing, etc., as a tapestry. If it’s visibly stained, do we still love it? Perhaps we love it … more?

The book is not just a commentary on specific artists but also an invitation to engage with our own values as consumers of culture. And Dederer’s vulnerability (she is honest about her own shortcomings as a mother in service to both her writing and, well, her drinking) makes the book a compelling read that changed how I think about problematic geniuses. —Greg Toppo, Senior Writer

Florida topped every state in the nation for the number of books removed from school libraries during the 2023-2024 school year.

That’s 4,500 books from July 2023 to June 2024, according to an annual report from PEN America, a nonprofit advocating for freedom of expression.

That represents nearly half of nationwide removals, which numbered 10,064. Iowa, which removed more than 3,600 books, was next closest to Florida.

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Florida’s 2023 law, HB 1069, created a legal process for removing books, including a requirement that they be pulled while schools respond to challenges filed by parents or citizens. The list compiled by PEN includes books permanently removed from schools, removed pending investigation, and restrictions based on grade level or requiring parental permission.

Thirty-three school districts in Florida removed books, according to PEN’s report.

Escambia, Clay, Collier, and Orange counties’ removal numbers were among the highest in the state.

Escambia accounted for 1,582 of Florida’s removals. A great deal of them were “banned pending investigation” in August 2023, shortly after the book removal law took effect.

During the 2024 legislative session, lawmakers passed a law limiting book challenges by residents without a child in school to one per month.

A group of book publishers against the Florida Board of Education in August, claiming the book removal law is overboard and has caused a chilling effect.

Nationwide

The 10,064 removals nationwide included 4,231 unique titles across 29 states and 220 school districts. In 2022-2023, schools removed 1,557; in 2021-2022, the number was 1,643.

Of that total, 43% were complete removals.

“It is important to recognize that books available in schools, whether in a school or classroom library or as part of a curriculum, were selected by librarians and educators as part of the educational offerings to students,” reads the PEN America news release.

“Book bans occur when those choices are overridden by school boards, administrators, or even politicians on the basis of a particular book’s content.”

Among the titles removed in more than one district, more than half, 57%, included sex-related themes and 39% included LGBTQ characters or people.

The most banned book was “Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi Picoult. Other most commonly removed titles include “Looking for Alaska” by John Green, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky, “Crank” by Ellen Hopkins, “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood, “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, and “A Court of Frost and Starlight” by Sarah J. Maas.

“Having the most banned book in the country is not a badge of honor — it’s a call for alarm,” Picoult said in PEN’s news release.

“‘Nineteen Minutes’ is banned not because it’s about a school shooting, but [] because of a single page that depicts a date rape and uses anatomically correct words for the human body. It is not gratuitous or salacious, and it is not — as the book banners claim — porn. In fact, hundreds of kids have told me that reading ‘19 Minutes’ stopped them from committing a school shooting, or showed them they were not alone in feeling isolated.”

The nonprofit states that its numbers present a “snapshot of the total number of book bans and the distribution of book bans across states and districts are likely an undercount. Book bans from schools and districts often go under-reported or unreported.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on and .

Local libraries are currently facing almost a dozen different book challenges, with critics of stories like “Bye-Bye Binary” and “The Blackbird Girls” calling for their removal from shelves.

But these books and other challenged stories are still available on the shelves in Anne Arundel County, thanks in part to protections county officials recently put in place.

The Anne Arundel County Public Library this month became the first library system in Maryland to be designated a “book sanctuary,” dedicated to collecting and protecting endangered books, and holding book talks and other events designed to make them broadly accessible.

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“We want to preserve everyone’s ability to read the things they want,” said Rachel Myers, the branch manager of Discoveries: The Library at the Mall, one of the county system’s libraries.

Declaring the library a book sanctuary, Myers said, shows that, “We are steadfast in our dedication to being a place that is protective of books and of people’s freedom to read.”

After beginning in 2022 in Chicago, sanctuary libraries have since spread to 12 other library systems in North America.

In Anne Arundel County, the library’s board of trustees’ decision follows passage of the Freedom to Read act in the last legislative session. took effect on its signing in April.

The new law says that any library receiving funding from the state has to follow certain standards and can’t, among other things, remove material due to partisan, doctrinal, ideological or religious disapproval.

Over the past five years, Maryland public libraries have seen a dramatic increase in staff threats and bomb threats related to book bannings, according to the . More than half of them have also faced book challenges, officials said.

These attempts have been happening “not just in our state, but in our county of Anne Arundel,” said Del. Dana Jones (D-Anne Arundel), the lead sponsor on the Freedom to Read Act. She spoke at a news conference held last week during the national observance of Banned Books Week.

During the event, County Executive Steuart Pittman the entirety of Anne Arundel county to be a book sanctuary.

Once the announcement concluded, Myers rang a big silver bell to announce that it was time for “Banned Book Storytime,” featuring a book called “Grandad’s Camper,” by Harry Woodgate.

Woodgate’s illustrated story – about a little girl traveling with her granddad after his male partner’s death – has been challenged nationwide. But now it finds refuge in Anne Arundel County, and that means something to librarians.

“To have that backup as a professional, you can’t understate how much that means,” Myers said. “It’s not just us out here alone trying to do it. It’s backed by so many people.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: editor@marylandmatters.org. Follow Maryland Matters on and .

There were two crates waiting for Valerie Smith, an elementary school librarian, when she arrived at the Sanford School Department’s central office on Monday. In one was a collection of 30 picture books featuring experiences of modern-day immigrants and their families, along with discussion prompts. In the other, a custom display built by Maine businesses to highlight the books.

For the district that has recently seen an influx of immigrants from Central Africa, Smith said it was the perfect fit. With tightening school budgets, the new Maine Department of Education initiative to send the diverse and inclusive collection to every district in the state will benefit all students, she said.

The Portland-based nonprofit, I’m Your Neighbor Books, that developed and distributed the collection nationwide said after almost three years of widespread bans targeting books on similar topics, this project strengthens Maine’s commitment to inclusive, diverse education. Smith, who hasn’t personally been targeted by the attacks on librarians through the book banning movement but has been wary of them, echoed the importance of the positive educational opportunities the collection will bring to her district.

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“That’s what we do in libraries. We want kids to see themselves in our books,” she said.

“Being able to enhance our collection, or widen it, with these books is going to be super — not only for those new Mainers or kiddos from different cultures coming to our schools, but are also great for our kiddos, who have been here all their life, because they can learn about some of those experiences by reading those books.”

The collection features books highlighting representation, inclusion and belonging of immigrants and first-through-third generation families that I’m Your Neighbor books has distributed to schools across the country. They include titles written by and about immigrants from different parts of the world, such as Abuelita and Me by Leonarda Carranza, about a girl and her grandmother experiencing racism, In My Mosque by M.O. Yuksel, a book highlighting mosques as gathering places, and Priya Dreams of Marigold & Masala by Meenal Patel, a book containing colorful descriptions of India.

Peaks Island author Anne Sibley O’Brien’s book, I’m New Here, about three immigrant children’s experiences in an English-speaking elementary school, is also featured in the collection.

However, the partnership with the Maine DOE, dubbed The Pine Project, is the first of its kind, distributing the organization’s Welcoming Library collection to every public school district with almost $650,000 in federal pandemic relief funds, according to Kendra Carter, an education marketing coordinator for the DOE.

The initiative will put almost 6,200 total books in circulation across the state, to be used as districts see fit, said Kirsten Cappy, executive director of I’m Your Neighbor Books.

“If we do not add in a collection of books about modern migrants and new generation communities, we’re leaving out what our classrooms and communities actually look like,” Cappy said about the importance of the collection, which she thinks will significantly diversify the titles available to Maine teachers.

“The presence of these books changes teaching, and it changes minds.”

The goal of the project, according to the Maine DOE, is to “enhance students’ understanding of diverse experiences and foster inclusive school environments,” Carter said in an email. The department will also offer an online training on September 30 to help educators teach the topics the books cover, which includes social emotional learning.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maine Morning Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lauren McCauley for questions: info@mainemorningstar.com. Follow Maine Morning Star on and .

Jennifer Edwards was a teenager in Arizona when she first read “Beloved,” Toni Morrison’s haunting novel about sexual violence and the brutal realities of American slavery.

“It had a profound effect on me,” she said, citing the empathy, historical understanding, and critical thinking skills the book imparted.

Now a mother of two sons and living in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Edwards wants teens in her community to have access to her all-time favorite book.

But under a broadening the definition of what school library materials are prohibited, her local board of education is set to vote Thursday on whether to pull the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and six other books with mature themes from the shelves of Rutherford County Schools.

“Banning books is not OK,” Edwards told the board last month as it began reviewing the materials. “Just because you don’t like what the mirror shows you doesn’t mean you put the mirror down.”

This week’s vote comes after the district, south of Nashville, already removed from its libraries this year under a previous policy, part of a wave of purges on campuses across Tennessee and other states.

In Tennessee, that wave started under requiring periodic reviews of catalogs to ensure materials are appropriate for the ages and maturity levels of the students who can access them. Librarians and teachers had to for parents to view. Early removals included books about marginalized groups, including people who identify as LGBTQ+, and descriptions of slavery and racial discrimination throughout U.S. history.

This spring, scrutiny escalated. Republican lawmakers added a definition of what’s “suitable” and, based on the prohibited any material that “in whole or in part contains descriptions or depictions of sexual excitement, sexual conduct, excess violence, or sadomasochistic abuse.”

In the absence of state guidance on how to interpret the changes — What constitutes excess violence, for instance? Are photographs of nude statues allowed? What about Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet”? — some school boards like Rutherford County’s are putting questionable material to a vote. Educators in many other districts are quietly culling their shelves of certain books.

A recent survey of members of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians found that more than 1,100 titles have been removed under the changes, with more under review. One librarian anonymously reported pulling 300 titles at a single school since the start of the academic year. Only a sixth of the organization’s members responded to the survey.

“We may never truly know the level to which books have been removed from school libraries in Tennessee,” the organization said in a statement, noting that large-scale removals may cause some libraries to fall under the state’s minimum standards for collection counts.

“A literal interpretation of this law may have the unintended consequences of gutting resources that support curriculum standards for fine arts, biology, health, history, and world religions, to name a few, especially in high schools, where AP curriculum and dual enrollment courses require more critical texts,” the group said.

Lindsey Kimery, one of the organization’s leaders, said the law’s rollout has created “chaos and confusion” for school librarians.

“Some librarians have received guidance from their central office; some have not,” she said. “Some boards are updating their policies for handling book challenges to align with the law’s changes. Some districts have interpreted the law to mean they should preemptively go through their collections and pull anything they think has one of the prohibited topics in it.

“It’s all over the map,” Kimery added.

Seven books that could be banned

Seven books are under review by Rutherford County Board of Education for possible removal from the district’s library shelves:

• “B����DZ����” by Tony Morrison
• “Queen of Shadows” by Sara J. Maas
• “Tower of Dawn” by Sara J. Maas
• “Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi
• “Skin and Bones” by Sherry Shahan
• “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Shbosky
• “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West” by Gregory Maguire

‘Phantom book banning’: Censorship in the shadows

The quiet censorship is being noticed by First Amendment advocates, from the ACLU of Tennessee to Julia Garnett, who graduated last spring from Hendersonville High School in Sumner County, north of Nashville.

Garnett started a free speech club at her high school during her senior year. Now a freshman at Smith College in Massachusetts, she is the youth spokesperson for the American Library Association’s , Sept. 22-28.

Last week, she searched her alma mater’s online library catalog to look for books by Sarah J. Maas and Ellen Hopkins, whose popular young adult novels are due to their mature themes and sexual content.

None were listed.

“They used to be there, but they’ve disappeared,” said Garnett. “I call it phantom book banning, where libraries are being censored, but not in a public way. I think that’s what scares me the most.”

The law is vulnerable to a federal challenge on First Amendment grounds, said Kathy Sinback, executive director of the ACLU of Tennessee. The statute’s vagueness, a lack of compliance guidance from the state, and the uneven way the law is being applied across Tennessee are among issues that open the door to a lawsuit.

“But we’d love to see the legislature fix the problems next year without having to pursue litigation,” Sinback said. “We’d like to see it made constitutional in a way that will ensure our children have access to the literature they deserve.”

Legal precedents support students’ First Amendment rights

The House sponsor of the law’s recent revisions, Rep. Susan Lynn of Mt. Juliet, did not respond to emails asking if she’d be open to revisiting the law. Some of her critics worry the goal is ultimately to take a legal challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court, where conservatives hold a majority.

The Senate sponsor, Joey Hensley of Hohenwald, said he believes the law is constitutional.

“I’m always open to making laws better,” he said, “but I don’t think this interferes with people’s First Amendment rights, and I’m personally not hearing about problems with it. The law’s intent is simply to ensure public schools do not give children access to materials that are not appropriate for their ages.”

Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said higher courts have consistently sided with First Amendment advocates on challenges to content in school libraries, even as

The school library is supposed to be a place of voluntary inquiry — a safe space for students to explore ideas under the supervision of adults instead of alone on their cellphones.

“This gets to the core of the First Amendment,” she said, “the idea that libraries are a marketplace of ideas, and elected officials should not be able to dictate their contents.”

But it’s also possible that another school library case could someday reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Two book ban cases from Iowa and Texas are already making their way through the federal courts.

Current legal precedent stems from the high court’s involving a school board in New York state that wanted certain books removed from its middle and high school libraries. In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled against the board and held that “the right to receive ideas is a necessary predicate to the recipient’s meaningful exercise of his own rights of speech, press, and political freedom.”

Justice William Brennan wrote that while “local school boards have a substantial legitimate role to play in the determination of school library content,” the First Amendment doesn’t give government officials the power to ditch books because they don’t like them or disagree with their viewpoints.

Ken Paulson, director of the Tennessee-based and a former editor-in-chief of USA Today, also cites the importance of a establishing that students have constitutional rights, too.

The case involved students in Des Moines, Iowa, who wore black armbands to their public school in silent protest of the Vietnam War. The court sided with the students.

“Because someone is 12 or 14, we sometimes think they don’t have constitutional rights,” Paulson said. “But they do, and they’re surprisingly robust. Students are not just students; they are citizens.”

Middle Tennessee district is a book ban hotspot

In Murfreesboro, a college town that is home to about 50,000 students in Tennessee’s largest suburban K-12 district, most titles removed so far were in high school libraries. They generally were contemporary young adult novels containing sexual content and other mature themes, from child abuse and suicide to substance abuse and LGBTQ+ issues.

The books were flagged as “sexually explicit” material by school board member Caleb Tidwell and removed this spring without going through the district’s library review committee that includes a principal, teachers, librarians, and a parent.

Xan Lasko, who recently retired as a high school librarian in Rutherford County, said the directives she received from Superintendent James Sullivan bypassed the district’s usual review process for handling complaints. Instead, Tidwell cited a provision of board policy requiring the immediate removal of sexually explicit material. Sullivan concurred, according to their email exchange obtained from the district through a public records request from Nashville TV station

Tidwell, a Republican who was reelected to the school board in August, said he made the requests on behalf of individuals who have expressed concerns but who feared retaliation from the media and individuals in the district.

In his opinion, all of the materials in question violate both the state’s obscenity law and local board policy. Most, he said, have “education value near zero, or very low.” For those that provide historical context, other books that go into those topics — but without sexually explicit language — are available.

“It’s a very contentious topic,” said Tidwell, who has three school-age children. “But if we focus on the content, most of this stuff is pretty clear. Yes, there is some subjectiveness to it, but there’s also a line. We need to determine what the line is, and then hold it.”

Lasko, the former librarian, said that’s what librarians and educators do.

“My biggest issue is that a small number of people were making the judgment to curtail what students are able to read using a vague law,” said Lasko, who now chairs the intellectual freedom committee of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians.

“We have master’s degrees in library science. We know what we’re doing,” she said. “But a lot of times, we weren’t being consulted.”

New library policy diminishes the role of librarians

In advance of this week’s vote on Tidwell’s latest request to remove more books, the board revamped its library materials policy to add language from the revised state law. It also eliminated the 11-member review committee appointed annually by the board to consider book complaints.

Instead, materials that district leaders deem to be in violation of the state’s obscenity law are to be immediately removed from all school libraries and then reviewed for a final decision by the board.

A second avenue for removal — through complaints filed by a student, parent, or school employee — also requires a board vote after receiving recommendations from the principal and superintendent and a review by an ad hoc committee.

“Before,” said the ACLU’s Sinback, “there was a thorough process where every person on the review committee had expertise and would read the book. They’d look at the questionable content but also the overall quality of the material and how it could impact kids exposed to it in both a positive and negative way.”

Now, she said, the decision rests completely with board members.

The changes concern school librarians like Brian Seadorf, who oversees the collection at Blackman High School in Murfreesboro. He asked board members and parents to “just talk to us” if they have concerns about certain books.

“We are educators, we are parents, we are grandparents. … We are good people,” Seadorf told the board on Aug. 22.

Angela Frederick, a Rutherford County resident and school librarian in a neighboring district, added: “The titles you’re considering removing are for older students approaching adulthood. It is developmentally appropriate for teenagers to mentally wrestle with difficult topics. It is also excellent preparation for higher education. Shielding them from books like these does not prepare them for anything but ignorance.”

Edwards, the Rutherford County parent who also spoke to the board about the proposed removals, is upset that is on the chopping block, even though she knows it’s a deeply sad and painful book to read. (Morrison, who died in 2019, said she was inspired to write the novel based on the true story of an enslaved woman, Margaret Garner, who killed her own daughter in 1856 to spare her from slavery.)

“I remember it took me several weeks to finish ‘Beloved’ when I was 15, because I had to put it down every few days,” recalls Edwards, now 42. “I had to have time to process what I was reading.”

“But to restrict literary genius,” she continued, “it just doesn’t make sense to me.”

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

A group of Montgomery County parents has asked the Supreme Court to review the school system’s refusal to let them opt their children out of classes that use LGBTQ+ books in lower elementary school grades.

, filed last week, claims the school system’s refusal to let parents opt their children out of the classes infringes on their religious liberty rights by exposing the children to gender and sexuality norms that contradict their religious beliefs.

The policy gives parents – who include Muslim, Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox families – “no protection against forced participation in ideological instruction by government schools,” as their petition claims.

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A Montgomery County school spokesman said the system was aware of the Supreme Court appeal and was reviewing it, but that the system would not comment on ongoing litigation.

The appeal is the latest twist in a case that began two years ago, when the schools unveiled a list of “LGBTQ+-inclusive texts for use in the classroom.” Those included books to be used in lower grades, including one for use in kindergarten and pre-K classrooms.

The books were introduced in the 2022-23 school year and are not part of a mandatory reading list for the classrooms but can be used by teachers in classroom instruction.

At issue are seven books in the lower grades, which include titles such as “My Rainbow,” which tells the story of a mother who creates a rainbow-colored wig for her transgender child; “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” about a girl worried she will lose time with her soon-to-be-married uncle, until his boyfriend befriends her and gains her trust; and “Pride Puppy,” about a puppy lost at a Pride parade, which uses each letter of the alphabet to describe the people it might have met there. The last book, for kindergarten and pre-K, invites students to search for drag kings and queens, lip rings, leather and underwear, among other items, according to court documents.

In court documents, a school system official said the books were not planned to be part of “explicit instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation in elementary school, and that no student or adult is asked to change how they feel about these issues.” Instead, the official said, teachers were expected to make the books available in the classroom, recommend them as appropriate for particular students or offer them “as an option for literature circles, book clubs, or paired reading groups; or to use them as a read aloud” in class.

Parents who objected to the use of the books were originally allowed to opt their children out of lessons that included the books. But the school system in March 2023 announced that opt-outs would no longer be allowed, beginning in the 2023-24 school year. It said parents can opt students out of parts of sex education, but not other parts of the curriculum, like language arts.

That sparked a lawsuit by a group of parents who objected on religious and secular grounds. They said they were not trying to ban the use of the books in Montgomery County schools but argued that, with no opt-out requirement, they were being forced to expose their children to ideas that conflicted with their firmly held religious beliefs.

So far, the underlying elements of the case have not been heard, merely the parents’ request for a preliminary injunction of the school system’s opt-out policy, which the parents have repeatedly lost.

A federal district judge in August 2023 denied the parents’ request for a preliminary injunction and a divided panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in May, writing that the parents had not met the high burden of showing that they were likely to win on their claim that the lack of an opt-out policy was actually coercing them to abandon part of their faith.

The majority opinion, written by Circuit Judge G. Steven Agee, said that because the record in preliminary injunction hearings was extremely sparse, the parents had not been able to “connect the requisite dots” to show that a burden on their First Amendment rights existed.

While the parents had shown that the books “could be used in ways that would confuse or mislead children and, in particular, that discussions relating to their contents could be used to indoctrinate their children into espousing views that are contrary to their religious faith. … none of that is verified by the limited record that is before us,” Agee wrote.

“Should the Parents in this case or other plaintiffs in other challenges to the Storybooks’ use come forward with proof that a teacher or school administrator is using the Storybooks in a manner that directly or indirectly coerces children into changing their religious views or practices, then the analysis would shift in light of that record,” Agee wrote.

The fact that parents might feel forced to forgo a public school education and pay for private school was not sufficiently coercive to be a burden on the parents’ First Amendment rights, based on the record so far, he wrote.

In a dissent, Circuit Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. said parents had met their burden for a preliminary injunction while the case was heard.

“Both sides of the issue advance passionate arguments. Some insist diversity and inclusion should be prioritized over the religious rights of parents and children. Others argue the opposite,” Quattlebaum wrote.

But the parents have made the case for an injunction of the opt-out policy for now, he wrote.

“The parents have shown the board’s decision to deny religious opt-outs burdened these parents’ right to exercise their religion and direct the religious upbringing of their children by putting them to the choice of either compromising their religious beliefs or foregoing a public education for their children,” Quattlebaum wrote. “I would … enjoin the Montgomery County School Board of Education from denying religious opt-outs for instruction to K-5 children involving the texts.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: editor@marylandmatters.org. Follow Maryland Matters on and .

The creators of a new, artificial-intelligence-assisted publishing effort called hope that offering interactive, personalized guidance and commentary from well-known writers, scholars and celebrities will help bring classic books alive for students.

They’re also aiming to help adults who might otherwise struggle in solitude through these weighty volumes.

In the process, they predict, the titles could capture a much bigger audience, one that someday may be able to talk back to the experts and even influence how scholars interpret literature. 

The challenge is whether they can make the AI work without being creepy or intrusive.

The price: $29.95 per book, with multi-book subscriptions available. They also plan to offer discounts to schools and find philanthropic partners as underwriters. 

Among the key selling points of Rebind’s e-books is that it offers a clever synthesis of original commentary and “lite” AI that seamlessly matches the experts’ utterances to readers’ queries. So a student studying George Washington’s could pose a question to none other than historian — or at least the version of her already pressed between the covers of an e-book on presidential speeches.

The improbable effort grew out of an equally improbable meeting between the philosopher and John Dubuque, great-grandson of the founder of the retail chain Plumbers Supply. Dubuque had spent 14 years as its CEO and sold the company in 2021, at age 38.

Suddenly retired, he set about reading philosopher Martin Heidegger’s famously difficult Being and Time, hiring an Oxford scholar for twice-weekly private tutoring sessions. 

“I had this amazing experience and realized at the end of it, ‘It’s too bad more people can’t access this,’” he said. “This is the only way I ever could have read this book.”

Dubuque also began playing with ChatGPT, asking it to summarize passages from equally difficult books like Alfred North Whitehead’s Process and Reality. He was deeply impressed with the AI, warts and all, and concluded that if someone could tame it for students, cut down on “” and focus it on the books, it’d be a game-changer. 

He shared his ideas with Kaag, who had helped him get through William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience.

Kaag had just published Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life, which resonated with his benefactor. Kaag, who as a kid had been a poor reader with a stutter, recounted to Dubuque how his mother would sit at their kitchen table and help him muscle through assignments. 

They realized that many people want to tackle classics like Moby Dick and James Joyce’s Ulysses, Dubuque said, but get intimidated by big, difficult books. “So they just give up and read things that they can read, not the things that they really want to read.”

‘We’re choosing the people — and they’re choosing the books’

Kaag soon recruited his friend Clancy Martin, an author and professor at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, who signed on to help find “Rebinders” for at least 100 AI-assisted e-books, offering readers what amounts to a one-on-one conversation with a novelist, critic or historian about the book.

The endeavor already boasts an impressive stable of author-experts: The Irish novelist John Banville on Joyce’s Dubliners, Goodwin on U.S. Presidents’ speeches, novelist on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Deepak Chopra on Buddhism and environmentalist on John Muir.

But there are also some unlikely pairings: Margaret Atwood on A Tale of Two Cities, Roxane Gay on Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, producer, actor and writer Lena Dunham on E. M. Forster’s A Room With a View, and the critic on Romeo and Juliet. 

“We’re choosing the people — and they’re choosing the books,” said Martin. 

To avoid copyright fights, the company is limited, for the moment, to books in the public domain, published before 1928. But Rebind is also in conversation with the world’s three largest publishers about offering contemporary books like 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and David Foster Wallace’s 1996 novel Infinite Jest.

Kipnis, who last spring wrote a of becoming a Rebinder, has said the endeavor “will radically transform the entire way booklovers read books.”

Acknowledging her misgivings about AI more broadly, she finally admitted to herself that perhaps this particular bet is worth pursuing. “The nihilist in me thinks if humans are going to perish, we might as well perish reading the Classics,” she wrote.

On occasion, Kaag, 44, and Martin, 57, have tried to politely steer a few scholars away from their first choice, with mixed results: When he offered the gig to novelist , for instance, Martin promised he could tackle any book he liked. So Greenwell proposed Henry James’ The Golden Bowl — a classic, but not exactly James’ most widely read novel. 

“I said, ‘O.K., Henry James is a great idea,” Martin recalled. “‘What about The Portrait of a Lady?’”

Sorry, Greenwell said. It was The Golden Bowl or nothing. 

Martin threw out a few other titles: The Turn of the Screw? Daisy Miller?

Eventually, he said with a laugh, they resolved it: “He’s doing The Golden Bowl.”&�Բ�����;

So far, only a few prominent authors have opted not to participate — the literary novelist Andre Dubus III, a close friend of Kaag’s, told him he was “dancing with the devil.”&�Բ�����;

Kaag said he’s getting a mixture of “really good” emails and “really serious hate mail” from colleagues fearful of AI. He takes that fear to heart, having spent much of his career . His classes, he said, have always been “very personal and very one-on-one.”

But he shifted his thinking a few years ago, after suffering from heart troubles that culminated in a cardiac arrest at age 40: “I just thought to myself, ‘I really would like to explore things that I hadn’t explored before.’”

Invoking Dubuque’s intimate tutoring sessions, he thought, “You can only scale one-on-one tutorials, or one-on-one conversations, so far.”

If AI can make that happen and bring the joy of reading to more people, he thought, perhaps it’s worth trying something new. “So to me, I don’t think it’s scary.”

‘Basically every question that I could possibly imagine’

Each book begins with a high-production-value video offering a sneak peak of what lies within. In the case of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, we get sweeping drone shots of Walden Pond, complete with the Rebinder — in this case Kaag himself — taking a swim. He lives in nearby Concord, Mass., and has taught the book for more than a decade at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. 

For the Walden Rebind, Kaag recorded 30 hours of audio commentary, answering “basically every question that I could possibly imagine” a college student asking. 

The volume of commentary ranges widely, from 10 hours for Dubliners to nearly 80 for Ulysses by the philosopher .

As for how Rebind will be used, Kaag sees it not as a replacement for class discussions, but as preparation, a tool that can field questions readers might be too embarrassed to ask in class.

The way Rebind works will be familiar to anyone who reads e-books, but with a revelatory twist: Readers can highlight and annotate text, but they can also open up a chat window anywhere and type or dictate questions about a passage or sentence. They can wonder aloud about ideas or passages they’re curious about, or simply type: “I’m lost.”&�Բ�����;

AI analyzes the query and matches it to the pre-loaded commentary, telling readers, if they click on a little icon, which parts of the answer are original and which are the AI smoothing out the syntax to be responsive to the query.

Antero Garcia, an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University and vice president of the National Council of Teachers of English, said he likes the transparency that comes with that breakdown. “I actually hope more AI does something like that, where you can see the sources of things” it presents to readers.

But he worries that tools like Rebind could draw users more into reading as a solitary pursuit. “If I’m lost in Dubliners, that’d be great to go to my English teacher or to a friend and, God forbid, have a reading group or a book group and just have a conversation about this text,” he said. 

Garcia said he was reluctant to overstate the isolating effects of AI, “but I do think there’s something missing as a result of relying on AI to guide us in our reading, rather than relying on reading being an inherently social thing.”

In the long term, Rebind actually seeks to integrate social elements that allow students in a class to “read and work together” within a text. Eventually, they hope to give teachers space for their own commentary. Future versions may offer Rebinders feedback from readers and the opportunity for deeper discussions via AI-moderated book clubs.

One feature stands out as potentially game-changing: If a reader wants to basically journal within the e-book, revealing his or her personal challenges along the way, that prompts the AI to search for commentary that helps: If you’re reading Walden, for instance, and type in, “This book makes me think of my times of loneliness and depression,” the e-book will reply: “I can understand how Thoreau’s reflections on solitude and the challenges of living authentically might resonate with feelings of loneliness and depression.”

That’s then followed up with a brief discussion of Thoreau’s encouragement “to remain attentive, even when things don’t particularly seem bountiful.”

The new e-books will also allow users to take notes, then use them to challenge the Rebinder to a conversation. While that could easily become a big privacy risk, Dubuque said Rebind will never sell user data, since it’s inviting users to “share the deepest, most meaningful things in their life and really give themselves to these books.” Profiting off those details is “not an option.”

‘Dancing with the devil’?

At the moment, the interactions are all through text, but the Rebinders have all given permission to have their voices reproduced so they can someday “chat” directly with users. “We have voice clones,” Dubuque said. “They’re very good.”

But for now audio remains an open question, an option they’re not quite ready to offer. On the one hand, who wouldn’t want to chat about Dubliners with Banville? On the other hand, that could be weird. A small portion of the conversation wouldn’t be Banville at all, but a crusty, Irish-accented Banville-bot.

Dubuque predicted they’ll eventually end up using voice, but he wants to do it carefully.

“We’re very sensitive to the ‘ick factor’ of AI.”

His plan is to release the first books next month. 

Though it’s a for-profit company, with Dubuque its only funder, Martin said he also sees it as an effort to ensure that more young people get the chance to read great books under the guidance of great teachers. “Most of us don’t get to go to Columbia or to Yale or to Princeton,” he said. Fewer still get to study with scholars like Goodwin, Atwood, Banville or Gay.

But Garcia, the Stanford scholar, urged caution.

“There’s something fraught about this pursuit of scale,” he said. “In trying to deliver good books or good learning experiences to people, we ultimately get funneled into this pathway: The way to get it to the most people is to take away that human element or dilute that human element through AI. It feels like that’s when you lose the spirit of it.”

For his part, Martin wants to make Rebind “the most fun, most dynamic and most interesting way” to read books. It won’t supplant the solitary experience of reading, he said, it’ll offer something different: the choice to read a book in solitude or to “have a whole rich conversation about it with someone.”&�Բ�����;

Or both. 

Like a third of the 600 districts across the state, the Hudson schools near Cleveland didn’t use science of reading books until Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and the state legislature ordered districts last summer to implement the curriculum by the 2024-25 school year.

Since the law passed, a state survey in the fall of 2023 found about a third of districts were already using the science of reading, a third were partly using it, and another third were using methods now banned by state law. 

Realizing a change in how reading was taught was inevitable even before the law was passed, Hudson district officials started searching for new books last spring — giving them more time than other districts still using lessons that have now fallen out of favor.

“It’s going to happen,” Hudson Assistant Superintendent Doreen Osmun recalled thinking. “So let’s dig in. Let’s roll up our sleeves. Let’s have our teachers, the experts in the classroom, make sure that they are looking at this thoroughly.”

How many districts currently out of compliance will follow Hudson’s lead and meet DeWine’s original target of the start of the school year to ax old strategies like balanced literacy and whole language in favor of the science of reading isn’t clear. 

But many won’t.

The change in how reading is taught in Ohio has proven not to be easy or quick —  despite DeWine’s urgency. Schools need time to replace old books and retrain teachers, many of whom learned other approaches in college and have used them for decades. It’s both a logistical and emotional challenge, made more complicated by about 200 Ohio school districts still using old teaching approaches when the law was passed.

Officials from some of those districts told The 74 they will take advantage of leeway in state law and approval from the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce to use the upcoming school year to implement science of reading.

When DeWine first announced the goal in his state of the state address in January 2023, the state had no idea how many schools were already using the science of reading and how many were using other approaches.

The law also relied on the state to take several steps before schools could even act. The biggest was to create a — books, workbooks, computer programs, videos  — based on the science of reading schools should use and a separate list of others that they now can’t. 

Knowing the timeline was tight, the legislature left the language vague and mandated the change “not later than the 2024-2025 school year,” offering flexibility. 

“Depending on where a district is, it may take longer to get to full implementation,” said DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney.

With the state education department being reorganized and its director not hired until December, everything was on hold until the first, incomplete list of approved materials came out in January. More materials were added in March and April. A list of approved intervention materials for students who are struggling was released in May. 

Chad Aldis, head of Ohio operations of the conservative-leaning Fordham Institute and a  backer of the shift to science of reading, said he understands the delay because of the work involved, particularly the “heavy lift” reviewing and approving books and other teaching materials.

“The idea that districts after February or March would be able to purchase new curricula, get teachers trained and be up to speed would have been a little bit ambitious,” he said. “I wish it could have been done sooner. But the process just took time so I think it’s a fair result that we see.”

He cautioned that it could take a few years to see gains in reading test scores as lessons change.

Among the previously-favored and popular books that are now not allowed are materials by Columbia University’s Lucy Calkins and the duo of university professors Irene Fountas and Gay Sue Pinnell, an emeritus professor of Ohio State University.

An intervention program known as Reading Recovery, which was brought to the United States by Pinnell, was also banned by the state, though advocates are suing to allow it.

After the survey, the department gave districts $64 million to help pay for new teaching materials – about $105 per student for elementary schools that need all new books and $8 for materials to help struggling students. Districts that already shifted to the science of reading and needed to make fewer changes received less money.

The department has also created a series of online lessons for teachers in the science of reading, requiring less than eight hours for some high school teachers and administrators and 22 hours for most elementary school teachers. So far, 33,000 teachers have completed that training and another 15,00 have registered for it.

Ohio’s training has been much smoother than in neighboring Indiana, where a required 80 hours and some early scheduling troubles flared into protests to the state board of education. Ohio’s online sessions are much more flexible than Indiana started with and take less time, so both major teachers unions in Ohio have reported only minor concerns.

Districts are also planning their own training as part of regular professional development as the year goes on.

In Hudson, a suburban district regularly among the state’s top scorers on state tests, the district tossed out now-banned books by Calkins as well as the Fountas and Pinnell “Classroom” reading materials it has used since 2020. The school board then purchased Benchmark Advance books approved by the state and by the national EdReports rating organization.

Osmun called the change “challenging,” since the state didn’t have a list of approved books until January.

Some districts needing to change have not moved as fast, including Solon, another suburban school district that often has the best test scores in the state. But Ohio education officials rated Solon as  “not aligned” with the science of reading. That district is waiting for the state to create a final list of approved materials before picking new ones, a district spokesperson said. 

The district isn’t sitting still, though. Solon teachers in the 2023-24 school year received training in reading and dyslexia, which is similar to science of reading training. More specific science of reading training will happen this coming year after the district picks new books.

Some low-scoring districts are also using the school year to change. The East Cleveland schools, one of the poorest in the nation and has been under academic supervision by the state, was also rated by the state as “not aligned,” but will use the upcoming year to select new books.

East Cleveland director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment  Tom Domzalski said the district spent last year on an already-planned overhaul of its math curriculum, so it left reading to this fall.

“My math is in a worse place than my reading curriculum,” he said. “We put our time and our energy into the area that needed that time and energy.”

He also echoed concerns of other districts about not wanting to rush after the state released its first list of approved materials in January.

“A good curriculum review process takes anywhere between six and 12 months,” he said. You can get it done in 90 days, too. If you’ve got the right group of people, and you’ve got folks that are in place for it, but how successful is it going to be?”

‘On Juneteenth’

Combining history and memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed’s “” offers a moving history of African American life and culture through the prism of Juneteenth. The award-winning presents an intimate portrait of the experiences of her family and her memories of life as an African American girl growing up in segregated Texas. The essays in her book invite readers to enter a world shaped by the forces of freedom and slavery.

Reed’s exploration of the history and legacy of Juneteenth is a poignant reminder of the hard history all Americans face.

‘O Freedom! Afro-American Emancipation Celebrations’

William H. Wiggins Jr.’s “” is the historical standard for African American emancipation celebrations. It offers an accessible and well-researched account of the emergence and evolution of Juneteenth.

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Wiggins brings together oral history with archival research to share the stories of how African Americans celebrated emancipation. It explains how Juneteenth is part of the tapestry of emancipation celebrations. These celebrations included such dates as , in North Carolina, , in Richmond, Virginia, and , in Washington, D.C.

What began as a local holiday has evolved into a national celebration.

Juneteenth celebrations are known for the variety of programs and events that highlight African American history and culture. In the 1960s, students at Prairie View A&M University in Prairie View, Texas, informed faculty that classes would not be held on Juneteenth. In Milwaukee, the local Juneteenth parade includes a group known as the riding their horses along Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. Juneteenth celebrations also feature cultural fairs and exhibitions, artistic performances and historical reenactments. Lectures and public conversations, community feasts and religious services are also part of the celebrations.

‘J�ܲԱ�ٱ��Գٳ�’

Ralph Ellison, perhaps best known for his novel “Invisible Man,” offers multiple meanings of Juneteenth in African American and American life in his posthumously published novel “.”

The ambivalence of Juneteenth is of a freedom delayed but not denied. Ellison’s spiraling novel captures this in the entangled and tragic lives of the racist Senator Sunraider – previously known as Bliss – and the minister who raised him, the Reverend A. Z. Hickman. For Ellison, Juneteenth represents more than just a celebration of emancipation. It also represents the shared fate of white Americans and African Americans in the quest to create a just and equal society. The promise and peril of Juneteenth is elegantly captured in Hickman’s words, “There’s been a heap of Juneteenths before this one and I tell you there’ll be a heap more before we’re truly free!”

‘Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African American Emancipation Celebrations, 1808-1915’

Mitch Kachun’s book, “Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African American Emancipation Celebrations, 1808-1915,” of emancipation celebrations and their influence on African American identity and community. Juneteenth joined a longer tradition of emancipation celebrations. Those celebrations included ones at the end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the United States on Jan. 1, 1808. They also included the that marked the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire on Aug. 1, 1834.

With an eye for historical detail, Kachun narrates a complex history of how Juneteenth and other freedom festivals shaped African American identity and political culture. The celebrations also displayed competing meanings of African American identity. In Washington, D.C. in the late 19th century, different groups of African Americans held distinct celebrations. These variations underscored tensions around political ideals, status and identity. Kachun’s book reminds us that Juneteenth served as a crucible for forging a collective and contested sense of African American community.

‘Rites of August First: Emancipation Day in the Black Atlantic World’

Similar to Kachun’s book, Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie’s “” reminds readers of a broader history and geography of emancipation celebrations.

Kerr-Ritchie focuses on how various African American communities adopted and adapted West India Day celebrations. He also explores how they created meaning and culture in celebrating the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies. Kerr-Ritchie’s book details how these celebrations moved across political borders and boundaries.

‘Juneteenth: The Story Behind the Celebration’

Contemporary invocations of Juneteenth often overlook its military history.

Edward T. Cotham, Jr.’s “” fills the void by exploring the Civil War origins of Juneteenth.

Cotham renders explicit the military context leading up to the events on June 19, 1865, in Galveston. This is when enslaved Black people there finally got word that they had been freed more than two years prior. Cotham reminds readers that the history of Juneteenth involves ordinary actions of many individual people whose names may not be widely known.

Collectively, these books about Juneteenth offer fresh perspectives on the history and culture of African Americans on a quest to fully express their freedom. Juneteenth is also an invitation for all Americans to continue to learn about and strive for freedom for all people.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

A lot of Rhode Islanders want to read Kristin Hannah’s latest novel, “.”

The e-book version of Hannah’s Vietnam War narrative had 837 holds across the state’s libraries as of April 12. Nearly a week later, on Thursday, April 18, that number had risen to 900, according to the statewide . At least four physical copies were still available.

Libraries don’t pay what consumers do for e-books — they may pay as much as nine times more, according to the Rhode Island Library Association. They’re also not technically buying books: Libraries purchase licenses to e-books, not the e-books themselves, and licenses expire. Libraries essentially lease books for a set number of checkouts or duration of time, usually one to two years.

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“If we purchased enough book licenses to satisfy even half of the 800 holds, it would cost us $24,000,” said Julie Holden, assistant library director at Cranston Public Library. “For one book. It’s a book that’s going to disappear in two years.”

The costliness of e-books and audiobooks — with limits driven largely by book publishers’ concerns over revenue, copyright and author compensation — inspired the state’s libraries to put their weight behind a pair of bills in the General Assembly: in the House, led by Newport Democratic Rep. Lauren Carson, and in the Senate, led by Democratic Sen. Victoria Gu of Westerly. The bills would leverage state contract law to give public libraries more control over their negotiations with e-book suppliers.

“If a bridge contractor is building a bridge in Rhode Island to replace the Washington Bridge, they have to build the bridge to the specifications of the state,” Holden said. “So that’s what this is saying: If you’d like to sell e-books to libraries in Rhode Island using state money, these are our terms. If the bills pass, and the publishers decide they’re not going to sell e-books to libraries anymore, then we’ll see what happens.”

Some of the protections offered by the bills include allowing libraries to determine loan periods and to buy e-books at prices closer to consumer rates. Licensing models which require libraries to pay a fee for each checkout would be eliminated, and libraries would also be able to disclose their license agreements to other libraries.

Several states aim to rein in prices

, , , , , , and all have similar legislation in process this year. Other states have seen support from lawmakers but opposition from the judicial or executive branches. After Maryland’s General Assembly unanimously passed a bill to protect libraries’ purchasing powers in 2022, the U.S. District Court in Maryland on the basis of it being unconstitutional — an opinion informed by Association of American Publishers’ legal battle to prevent the law’s enactment, Publishers Weekly . In December 2021, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul a similar bill.

Holden, who also chairs Rhode Island Library Association’s membership committee, said e-books are a towering expense in the state’s . Public libraries are essentially paying for items they don’t own. The two major e-book platforms are OverDrive and Hoopla — the former allows libraries to purchase books for a set amount of time, while the latter makes libraries pay per-checkout. What’s consistent to both models is a reliance on licensing.

“Normally a state or municipality would never spend money on something that’s going to disappear. It’s not a good investment. It’s not a good use of taxpayer money,” Holden said.

Around a decade ago, e-book purchases were comparable to hardcover prices, Holden noted. That changed once publisher HarperCollins moved to a licensing model that limited books to 26 checkouts.

“Overall, the prices have risen, and the terms have been restricted,” Holden said. “So now we’re spending money on disappearing products.”

That’s totally different from the consumer space: Look at Amazon’s and you’ll find books under $1 or books at 80% off. Audiobooks, which Holden called “a whole other beast,” also run up costs and libraries pay far more for them than a consumer does. A recent Stephen King audiobook, Holden said, was around $130.

Both time-based and checkout-based licensing have drawbacks, Holden said. With the former, the clock starts running once a book is purchased, meaning libraries are paying for hours, days or even weeks where the book is not being read by library patrons.

The checkout model, meanwhile, means people sometimes have to fight over the limited supply of a book. Holden said Cranston Public Library had to cap its Hoopla expenditures to $1,000 monthly, which translates to roughly $33 a day based on each checkout costing the library around $2 or $3. Most days, the checkouts are already full by 6 a.m., because people are putting in their holds at midnight.

“We’ve had a lot of people emailing us complaining, calling us begging us to fund this further, so that all the books aren’t gone at midnight,” Holden said. “So now our patrons are staying up until midnight, so they can check out the day’s quota.”

Similar e-book bills have emerged several times in Rhode Island’s General Assembly — in , , , and . The Senate Committee on Education did recommend passage of Sen. Hanna Gallo’s of the bill, but the legislation has not progressed much otherwise.

Rhode Island Current reached out to two of the major e-book retailers about the proposed legislation.

“We are not prepared to comment at this time,” said David Burleigh, a director of corporate outreach for Overdrive.

Hoopla did not return multiple requests for comment.

Larry Berman and Greg Paré — spokespeople for the Rhode Island House and Senate, respectively — said in a joint statement via email: “Public hearings have been held on both bills in the respective House and Senate committees. Leadership is reviewing the testimony as the bills travel through the normal legislative process.”

Publishers struggle with shadow libraries

While libraries’ budget concerns over e-books is a more recent trend, book publishers have worried about their own finances since 1908, when the emerged. This feature of U.S. copyright law allows the original purchaser of a book to resell their copy. That’s one reason publishers fretted when the secondhand book market saw exponential growth thanks to Amazon, and it contributes to publishers’ more modern preference for licensing over traditional sales, according to a from the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy.

Brick and mortar libraries must play by the rules of copyright. More harmful to publishers’ bottom lines are shadow libraries — online repositories of pirated e-books and PDFs that are virtually limitless in size. After years of battles over audiovisual content like pirated movies and music, federal attention on illicit libraries has intensified in recent years. A 2023 by the Office of the United States Trade Representative noted that Libgen, one of the more infamous and popular book pirates, has seen legal action from 11 countries — including the United States, who associated with the site in 2022.

The Dublin, Ohio-based OCLC — which maintains WorldCat, the largest library catalog with data aggregated from institutions worldwide  — also against one of these shadow libraries in Ohio U.S. District Court in February.

None of this has stopped Libgen from being mirrored, or copied to different servers. One Libgen mirror and search engine boasted a collection of 31,645,836 books as of this writing.

Rhode Island’s public libraries, meanwhile, can’t even obtain a digital copy of E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web,” a children’s classic that was published 72 years ago.

“We can’t purchase it,” Holden said. “We don’t know why. It’s just not available for libraries…The libraries cannot purchase it.”

The Kindle version is currently available on Amazon for $5.99.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com. Follow Rhode Island Current on and .

Some parents’ public comments against diversity and inclusion initiatives likely led to “increased fears and possibly harassment” of students, and the district’s efforts to reduce any harm were insufficient, according to from the department’s Office for Civil Rights.

The resolution required the Atlanta-area Forsyth County Schools to notify students of its library book review process, but concluded it did not violate federal discrimination and harassment laws when Superintendent Jeff Bearden directed staff to remove eight books last year for material it deemed sexually explicit.

Some anti-censorship advocates welcomed the department’s involvement.

“This is the most volatile time in history of book censorship,” said Pat Scales, a retired school librarian and former chair of the American Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee. “I hope that the [Office for Civil Rights] will look into more cases.”

That’s what Democrats in the House requested earlier this year when the department to investigate whether restrictions on books and curriculum violate the law. The Georgia action — which a department spokesperson confirmed was the first time its civil rights division issued findings on book removals — could inform how other districts handle future challenges. But the spokesperson added that “neither the investigation nor the resolution agreement directs, supervises or controls curriculum.”

Democrats recently criticized the GOP-led , which they say will lead to more book bans. Republicans intend the measure to increase transparency into curriculum and reading materials.

The department’s resolution comes as Republicans continue to push restrictions on students’ access to library materials. The Louisiana Senate last week passed a bill that would allow parents to block their children from checking out books they considered inappropriate. And under that takes effect Aug. 1, librarians and educators in Arkansas could face criminal charges if they distribute texts labeled “obscene.”

Last week in Florida, nonprofit PEN America, publisher Random House, five authors whose books have been removed and two parents for withdrawing controversial books even when experts in the district advised against it. 

The district is “depriving students of access to a wide range of viewpoints, and depriving the authors … of the opportunity to engage with readers and disseminate their ideas to their intended audiences,” according to the complaint. 

Beyond its investigation into the 54,000-student Forsyth district, the department began looking into the Granbury Independent School District in Texas last December. The American Civil Liberties Union calling the district’s removal of books with LGBTQ themes sex discrimination under Title IX. That investigation is ongoing.

In Forsyth, parents complained about books that included John Green’s a story of a boy at an Alabama boarding school that has a sex scene, and a memoir about growing up gay and Black by journalist George Johnson, one of the plaintiffs in the Florida lawsuit. The books, which were not required reading for any class, are young adult titles considered suitable for teens 14 and up.

The district removed eight books. In early August last year, the district’s media committee decided to return seven of them after reviewers considered a series of questions such as whether the books had a “high degree of potential user appeal and interest” and “promoted diversity.” was the only one not returned to the shelves.

But leaders did not take “steps to address with students the impact of the book removals,” according to the department’s investigation. As part of the resolution, the district must survey middle and high school students next fall to ask about harassment based on race or sex and whether they feel comfortable reporting it. 

Forsyth spokeswoman Jennifer Caracciolo said the district would implement the resolution and was “committed to providing a safe, connected, and thriving community” for students and families.

One Forsyth County student said a book ban focusing on LGBTQ and non-white characters “contradicts the idea of democracy.”

“Despite the claims that these bans are not based [on] discrimination, they have a ripple effect,” said Isabella Rappaccioli, who will be a sophomore at Forsyth’s Alliance Academy for Innovation this fall. She’s also a member of the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition, which campaigned against restricting classroom discussions of divisive concepts. s.

“Challenges like these … vicariously send a message to our young people that they are different from their peers,” she said. “No child deserves to feel that way.”

But Neal McCluskey, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the libertarian Cato Institute, called the resolution “federal overreach.”

“The agency’s analysis seems to have come down to this: Some students reported feeling that the school climate was hostile to their group, therefore it was,” he said. “But issues like this are much more complicated, including whether others felt keeping the books in libraries was hostile to them.”&�Բ�����;

The department’s investigation is not the first time the district became embroiled in controversy over a decision to remove books some parents find inappropriate. Under  in January with parents who complained about several books, the district must allow the reading of explicit excerpts at school board meetings.

Mama Bears, a conservative parents group that advocates for book restrictions, last year when the board refused to allow parents to recite passages with profanity or sexually explicit language during public comments. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Story sided with the parents. In a settlement, the district paid $107,500 in legal fees and agreed not to prohibit parents from quoting from any book in the district’s school libraries or classrooms. 

“It’s their First Amendment right to be able to give their opinions like anybody else,” said David Keating, president of the Institute for Free Speech, which defended the parents. 

The nonprofit didn’t take a position on whether the books removed were unsuitable for students, and he said he would defend liberal parents if they were silenced for arguing in favor of such books. But he added that if districts are removing books because of political pressure, “that raises First Amendment red flags all over the place.”

Legal precedent on the issue dates back to 1982. The U.S Supreme Court ruled in that the Island Trees Union Free School District in New York violated the Constitution when it removed books that some parents deemed to be “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and just plain filthy.”

‘True education’

In Granbury, Superintendent Jeremy Glenn’s comments — such as there being “no place” for books with transgender characters in school libraries and that “there are two genders” — sparked the district’s review of books. Ultimately two of the three titles removed contained LGBTQ topics, including “This Book is Gay,” a nonfiction for youth coming out as gay, lesbian or transgender.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas arguing that removing books with LGBTQ themes amounts to sex discrimination under Title IX.

Scales, the retired librarian, said schools discriminate against students when they remove such books.

“Books help readers develop empathy,” she said. “Let’s give them the books and hope that this younger generation will see things differently than the folks who are trying to shut down true education.”

State Rep. , R-Frisco, sent a letter on Wednesday to school districts asking school officials to sign the pledge. In his letter, Patterson said children across Texas have been exposed to material such as “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” a graphic novel that has both nationwide and in Texas among some parents and Republican officials.

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The book, by Maia Kobabe, depicts the author’s experiences growing up and struggling to identify as gay, bisexual or asexual. It contains a few pages of explicit illustrations depicting oral sex, which have outraged some parents and state leaders.

The nonbinary author, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, told The Texas Tribune last year that students need “good, accurate, safe information about these topics” instead of “wildly having to search online” and potentially stumble across misinformation.

But some Republicans, including Gov. , have called the book “pornographic.” Patterson repeated that depiction in his letter.

“Both local districts and the Legislature will be working diligently on policies to prevent such books from being allowed on campus in the future,” Patterson wrote. “However, we also acknowledge school districts have a lot [of] power in the market when purchasing books and that if we stand together against explicit materials for children, book vendors will be forced to adjust.”

The letter was signed by an additional 26 Republican lawmakers, including state Rep. R-Fort Worth, who initially compiled a list of some that he asking for information about how many are available on their campuses.

“Respectfully, I ask you to take this pledge on behalf of every Texas child in public schools who doesn’t deserve to be exposed to obscene materials,” Patterson said.

Abbott cited “Gender Queer” when directing the Texas Education Agency to related to “the availability of pornography” in November and also cited the book when directing the TEA, Texas State Library and Archives Commission and State Board of Education to develop standards to block books with “overtly sexual” content in schools.

Shannon Holmes, executive director of the Association of Texas Professional Educators, said in a statement that pornography has a legal definition and not everything a person finds distasteful meets that definition.

“ATPE urges school districts to recognize the power of the elected school board to work with parents and educators to find the right balance for their local communities and avoid getting caught up in these types of politically motivated pledges,” Holmes said in a statement.

Brian Lopez is an education reporter at , the only member-supported, digital-first, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. This article  at TexasTribune.org.