September 15, 2022
Dear LREI Community,
I hope this note finds you well and enjoying the school year and our approach to fall, beginning officially next Thursday, September 22, 2022, one week from today. Sunday marks the beginning of Banned Books Week – a fall tradition and celebration of the right to express oneself freely and through the expressions of others to learn about ourselves and our communities. We try to mark this week each year, never wanting to take for granted the freedom to read, to use literature to learn and grow and experience, and to be a part of our complex world, joining lives we otherwise might not live, both real and fictional. This year it feels even more important to focus on banned and challenged books as threats to our rights are taking on more urgent shapes and sizes.
We are seeing significant challenges to the choices that both school and public libraries make about which books to put on shelves, challenges to the books that are on school reading lists, that are available in classrooms, and even to the very idea of publicly funded municipal libraries. Some states have laws that hold teachers and librarians accountable with the threats to their employment and financial penalties.
There are any number of ways we, as individuals, can push back on these attempts to limit access to particular books and to censor what our children are able to read in school, in a library, and even those they can access in bookstores. You can:
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Read a banned book. There are many lists of commonly challenged books. Give it a Google.
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Read a banned book with your child and in age-appropriate ways, use this opportunity to talk with your child about why this book was challenged and about civil liberties.
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Write letters to your elected representatives and support those who are pushing back in other states.
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Support the Brooklyn Public Library’s efforts to provide digital library cards to all teens in all states so that they are able to read books banned where they live.
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Sign up for a library card. Supporting our public libraries not only gives you access to NYC’s three amazing library systems (New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library, Queens Public Library), it demonstrates our support for the very idea of public access to information and services. The neighborhood around LREI is home to the Hudson Park Library, the Mulberry Street Library, and the newly renovated and reopened Jefferson Market Library of the NYPL.
Something many of us have taken for granted seems to have become a use it or lose it proposition and I intend to use it like never before.
We spend considerable time thinking with students about how to make good media choices, how to both challenge themselves to grow as readers and consumers of information while being careful and protecting themselves – working to choose appropriate and truthful materials. While we don’t want to restrict access to literature that will open up the world and may lead to answers and understandings that are important for children and adolescents, we know that too fast and too soon can lead to being overwhelmed and even more confused. This is a fine line and one that, in our experience, open conversation and discussion will help to clarify, rather than to obfuscate as bans and ignorance likely will.
Leading these efforts, we are fortunate to have three amazing librarians – Jesse Karp – early childhood librarian, Stacy Dillon – Sixth Avenue librarian, and Karyn Silverman – high school librarian. Our libraries have a terrific range of books and the librarians are careful to make sure that students are reading age-appropriate books, while not censoring the experiences of the people represented in the many pages on our libraries’ shelves. Need help choosing books? Have questions about what your child should be/could be reading? Great questions. Ask a librarian. Please.
