This is a love letter to libraries.
Thank you for being a quiet place filled with books. There are so few quiet places where we can exist without paying — no need to buy a cup of coffee before I ask the librarian a question. Thank you for making learning look beautiful, with your dark oak bookshelves stretching up, and your little stools to reach the top shelf, and your endless rows of colorful spines stacked in neat columns like vertebrae. Thank you for being a place where everyone feels welcome. Thank you for being free, because knowledge should be free. Not everyone has a home with a computer and internet, but, because of you, everyone can have access to the opportunities those resources provide.
I wish everyone saw books as the treasure you do. If the Nazis had paused, and let their fingers caress the fraying edges and feel the thickness of the pages as their eyes lingered on the titles, maybe they would never have burned the books. Maybe they would have read them and learned to think for themselves.
I wish the people who are banning books today would read the books they claim to be so dangerous. I wish everyone had the courage of librarians, the ones who say: “Shhh, honey, we’re reading”. People make so much noise about what they don’t understand. Don’t they know you have to be quiet to read?
I know times are hard. Stay a quiet place, please, full of worlds written for everyone.
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Libraries of all types receive only 0.003% of the federal budget, but their programs and services are used by more than 1.2 billion in-person patrons, and many more virtual visitors. They offer early literacy development and grade-level reading programs, summer reading programs for kids, high-speed internet access, employment assistance for job seekers, homework and research resources, veterans’ telehealth spaces, STEM programs, and small business support for entrepreneurs [1].
On March 14 of this year (2025), Donald Trump issued an executive order that listed the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) as one of the governmental entities to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law”, as part of his effort to “[continue] the reduction in the elements of the Federal bureaucracy that the President has determined unnecessary” [2].
The IMLS distributes more than $200 million in grants nationwide [3]. Now that the Trump administration has frozen funding to the IMLS and placed the agency’s roughly 70 staff members on administrative leave, libraries across states are suffering. Although most libraries are funded by city and county governments, federal dollars help pay for summer reading programs, interlibrary loan services, and digital books. In 2023, more than 660 million people globally borrowed e-books, audiobooks, and digital magazines. Due to Trump’s funding freeze, that service is now in jeopardy; Cindy Hohl, president of the American Library Association (ALA), explained that “the cost of providing digital sources is too expensive for most libraries” [4].
Libraries are also a cornerstone of the fight against book bans. The American Library Association has been pivotal in tracking data about banned and challenged books, as well as fighting back against these bans. When the U.S. Department of Defense Education Activity announced on February 7 that it would remove “books potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology topics” in DoD schools, the ALA released a statement stating that “the DoDEA is engaging in censorship of legitimate views and opinions that violates the First Amendment rights of those who serve our nation and their families, thereby denying them the very freedoms they have pledged to protect with their lives” [5].
The U.S Supreme Court addressed the removal of library books from high school and junior high school libraries in the 1982 case Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico. The Board of education of the Island Trees Union Free School District in New York had removed books from school libraries, characterizing them as “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy”, declaring “it is our duty, our moral obligation, to protect the children in our schools from this moral danger as surely as from physical and medical dangers” [6].The Court ultimately decided that “the special characteristics of the school library make that environment especially appropriate for the recognition of the First Amendment rights of students”, and that “local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to “prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion” [6].
In the Court’s decision, they reflected deeply on the importance of libraries to students. While they acknowledged the authority of school boards to choose a curriculum and academic materials, they also stated that students’ “selection of books…is entirely a matter of free choice; the libraries afford them an opportunity at self-education and individual enrichment that is wholly optional”, an opportunity that must be protected because “In our system, students may not be regarded as closed-circuit recipients of only that which the school chooses to communicate” [6]. The Supreme Court cited the decision from one District Court, which stated that in the school library “a student can literally explore the unknown, and discover areas of interest and thought not covered by the prescribed curriculum. . . . Th[e] student learns that a library is a place to test or expand upon ideas presented to him, in or out of the classroom” [6].
Since 2021, efforts to ban books have spiked; in 2020, 231 unique titles were challenged, while in 2021 this number jumped to 1,858. In 2022, a total of 2,571 unique titles were challenged, and in 2023 this number climbed even higher to 4,240 [7]. While this number decreased to 2,452 in 2024, the ALA states that this decrease may be the result of underreporting, censorship by exclusion, and legislative restrictions. Underreporting is when book challenges are not publicly reported in order to avoid risk to library workers’ professional livelihood and personal safety. Censorship by exclusion occurs when library workers are prohibited from purchasing books, often due to legislative restrictions, which are laws that require school districts to restrict or remove library materials broadly deemed to include “sexual content” or controversial themes — often resulting in the removal of books with LGBTQ+ characters or themes, as well as books about race or racism and featuring characters or color [8].
A 2022 report by PEN America analyzed documented cases of book bans between June 2021 and July 2022 [9]. They found that 41% of banned or challenged books (674 titles) explicitly address LGBTQ+ themes or have LGBTQ+ characters. A total of 9% of these feature transgender characters or stories (145 titles). A total of 40% of banned book titles (659 total) contain prominent characters of color, and 21% of banned book titles directly address issues of race and racism.
PEN America identified at least 50 groups operating at the national, state, or local levels, over 70% of which have formed since 2021 [9]. These groups are campaigning in an effort to control and limit the kinds of books that are available in schools. They use social media and inflammatory language like “grooming” and “pornography” to influence public perception; they circulate book lists to their audiences to challenge, flood school districts with official challenges, mobilize supports to attend board meetings, and even file criminal complaints against teachers, school district officials, and librarians. PEN directly linked 20% of the book bans enacted in the 2021-22 school year to these groups, and estimated an additional 30% of bans were the result of these groups’ likely influence, including the use of common language or tactics [9].
A 2022 CBS news poll showed that Americans “overwhelmingly reject” banning books about history or race [10]. The movement to ban books is undemocratic. It imposes restrictions on all students based on the preferences of those seeking the bans. As Varian Johnson stated, “I think a parent can say, well, I don’t want my child to read this. I can respect that. But what gives you the right to bar all children from reading it? To bar all children from seeing a life that imitates theirs? It bars them from seeing someone who looks like them exist on the page and triumph over something…Anytime a book that features someone who looks like you is banned, it says that you’re not worthy. You don’t deserve to exist. You’re not as important as other things. Your life is not important. That’s wrong and it’s dangerous” [9].
Books themselves are not dangerous. They are a tool for education, and they create space for conversations with young people about how to navigate the world. Adults must be willing to have those uncomfortable conversations, instead of denying young people the opportunity to become aware of ideas and worlds that are different from those in which they grew up. Libraries are one space in which those conversations can take place. We must protect the right of every young person to explore. We can start by protecting public libraries.
[1] (ALA Responds to White House Assault on IMLS | American Libraries Magazine).
[2] (Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy – The White House).
[3] (What’s happening with the Institute of Museum and Library Services? | AP News).
[7] https://www.ala.org/bbooks/censorship-numbers
[8] https://www.ala.org/bbooks/book-ban-data
[9] https://pen.org/report/banned-usa-growing-movement-to-censor-books-in-schools/
[10] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/book-bans-opinion-poll-2022-02-22/