The Librarians (2025) Director: Kim A. Snyder thelibrariansfilm.com Running time: 92 minutes About: The Librarians follows librarians in Florida and Texas as they work to protect children’s rights to access books from challenges like Texas’s Krause List, which targets 850 books focused on race and LGBTQ+ stories and has triggered book bans across the … Continue reading The Stacks on Screen
Clockwise from top left: Tiwanna Nevels, assistant state librarian at State Library of North Carolina in Raleigh, sits with some of her favorite challenged books in the Big Chair (sponsored by Sage, the Banned Books Week Coalition, and ALA’s Unite Against Book Bans); Amy Hermon, librarian at Royal Oak (Mich.) High School and host of … Continue reading Bookend: Speaking Out
A panel of librarians and authors dug into this slice of the broader fight against censorship at “Free Children Read Freely: Banned Books in Story Times for Young Children,” a June 28 session of the American Library Association’s (ALA) 2025 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia. Pat Scales, a retired school librarian and author of … Continue reading Free Children Read Freely
That relief has been a long time coming for Hickson, who retired late last year from her job as media specialist at North Hunterdon High School in Annandale, New Jersey. Just three years earlier, she had been called a pedophile and a pornographer at a public school-board meeting by a group of parents demanding to … Continue reading Banning the Book Bans
Throughout her more than 25-year career, Lin has garnered many accolades, including a 2010 Newbery Honor, 2019 Caldecott Honor, and 2022 Children’s Literature Legacy Award. In advance of her appearance at the American Library Association’s upcoming 2025 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia, she talked with American Libraries about being inspired by myths, the insidiousness … Continue reading Newsmaker: Grace Lin
The removal was done in transgression of the library board’s book reconsideration policy. The book’s catalog record also vanished. Local media outlets reported that the book was removed by our then-director who, a few weeks into the role, was called into our town first selectman’s office along with the head of the library board and … Continue reading Into the Fray
As in recent years, the 2025 report documented censorship in libraries from the previous year. In 2024, ALA recorded 821 attempts to censor library books and other materials across all library types. This is a decrease from the 1,247 attempts that were recorded in 2023 but still the third-highest number since ALA began tracking library … Continue reading ALA Releases State of America’s Libraries 2025 Report
In February, Kluwe was arrested at a city council meeting in Huntington Beach, California, after speaking out against the installation of a plaque to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the town’s central library. The plaque, as unanimously approved by the city council, features the stacked words “Magical, Alluring, Galvanizing, Adventurous” as well as the sentence … Continue reading Newsmaker: Chris Kluwe
John Green, the celebrated young adult author and vlogger, has been an advocate for TB treatment access since 2019, when he met Henry, a teenager with TB, during a trip to Sierra Leone. Henry gave Green “the view from below,” he says, quoting his late friend and global health pioneer Paul Farmer, who described the … Continue reading Newsmaker: John Green
New values for challenging times On January 21, ALA Council approved five new Core Values • access • equity • intellectual freedom and privacy • the public good • sustainability Council cochairs Erin Berman and Sara Dallas explained the reasons for the changes: “This is a crucial moment for our profession, as our library community … Continue reading 2024 Year in Review
Every day, library workers provide a vital public function. We are entrusted to serve our communities, and we know that the best way to serve the public good is to welcome everyone into libraries to access accurate information. To answer the call to join public service is to step into the rank of noble professionals … Continue reading Calling All Nations
DuVernay’s credits in film and television include Selma, 13th, Queen Sugar, and When They See Us. Two of her films have been inspired by frequently challenged books: 2018’s A Wrinkle in Time, based on the Newbery Medal–winning title by Madeleine L’Engle, and 2023’s Origin, centering on the life of Isabel Wilkerson, author of Caste: The … Continue reading ‘We Have to Work Together’: Action Beyond Banned Books Week
