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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we continue our week of call-ins for teachers and other educators as the new school year is dawning on how the culture wars are hanging over your schools and school communities, today a cal- in for school librarians. What are kids reading? Is anyone trying to ban books from your library? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

I don't think we've had a call-in specifically for school librarians before on this show. We've had a few for public library librarians, we've done that a few times, but never for school librarians as far as I can recall. I don't know if any school librarians even happen to be listening this morning. If not, I'll ask another question. School librarians if you're out there, the floor is yours for the next few minutes at 212-433- WNYC, 212-433-9692. What are kids reading?

With the culture wars raging, is anyone trying to ban books from your school library in any way? 212-433-WNYC. Are they trying to get you to remove any books that have been on your shelves for a long time or get you to restrict access to any specific new books that are coming out or groups of books or genres of books? What's happening out there? 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692.

Now, we know this has been an issue in New Jersey, not just in places like Florida and Texas. I'll give you a New Jersey example in a minute, but school librarians, I know many of you are good storytellers and know a good well told story when you see one or hear one. Call up and tell everyone a true story you might like them to know about pressure to ban or restrict any books, or if you're not dealing with that, just more benignly, what are kids reading? How's that been changing over the years if you've been a school librarian for a while? 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692.

Now, on the book banning issue, I saw on the website of the Association of School Librarians they've got a downloadable brochure that's called an Intellectual Freedom brochure. It includes, for example, the difference between selection and censorship, librarians, I'd be curious to hear you weigh in on that, what to do before a challenge occurs, where to obtain assistance during a challenge, and how the American Library Association Code of Ethics affects school librarians.

Anyone want to weigh in on any of that? What is the difference between book selection and censorship of the books you don't select? Have you ever taken any steps to prevent a challenge to a book in your library before that challenge might have actually occuredr? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Yes, this is current in New Jersey. Here's an article from The New York Times from last month that I'll read a little of, headline, "With Rising Book Bans, Librarians Have Come Under Attack." It starts with a story from New Jersey. It says, "Martha Hickson, a high school librarian in Annandale, New Jersey, heard last fall that some parents were going to call for her library to ban certain books.

At 7:00 PM, when she and her husband would usually watch Jeopardy-" that says, "-she got comfortable in her recliner and turned on a live stream of the local school board meeting. A parent stood up and denounced two books, Lawn Boy and Gender Queer, calling them pornographic. Both books award winners with LGBTQ characters and frank depictions of sex, have been challenged around the country-" The Time says "- and were available at the North Hunterdon High School library.

Then the woman called out Ms. Hickson, who was the librarian there, by name for allowing her 16-year-old son to check out the books. 'This amounts to an effort to groom our kids to make them more willing to participate in the heinous acts described in these books,' said the parent, Gina DeLusant, according to a video recording of the meeting. 'It grooms them to accept the inappropriate advances of an adult.' Ms. Hickson, the librarian, watching the livestream from home, said the accusation left her sick to her stomach with a tightness in her chest. 'I was stunned,' she said, 'I couldn't believe it.'"

The article goes on, "As highly visible and politicized book bans have exploded across the country, librarians accustomed to being seen as dedicated public servants in their communities, have found themselves on the front lines of an acrimonious culture war with their careers and personal reputations at risk. They've been labeled pedophiles on social media, called out by local politicians, and reported to law enforcement officials." There is a calling-the-police aspect of this story. Maybe it will come back to that later.

"Some librarians have quit-" this says, "-after having been harassed online. Others have been fired for refusing to remove books from circulation."

That from The New York Times recently and you get the idea and school librarians or maybe even school librarians who've left the profession because of threats because you don't want to put up with this nonsense or potential danger to you, or maybe if you're a retired school librarian looking on at the current scene, the phones are yours. Tell us a story of how you've had to deal or just how you're being prepared to deal, just in case, with the proud boys who come up in this story, showing up at some school board meetings to denounce certain books or anyone else who wants to ban books from your school library shelves. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. We'll take your calls right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Okay, school librarians, you're up. What are kids reading? Is anyone trying to ban books from your library? Cheryl in Ocean County. You're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling us. Hi.

Cheryl: You're welcome. Hi, Brian. Hi everybody who's listening. I was so happy when I heard you say "librarians," this morning. I have been an elementary school librarian in Ocean County in New Jersey for the past three years. This is my fourth year. There were two points that I wanted to make.

The first one is we have updated learning standards that pertain to specialists. When your elementary school kids go to art or music or library or tech we are now required to teach climate change facts which is great. Whether it's different kinds of projects that we want to create on our own to expose kids to this information and learning or books that we choose to read, it gives us a lot of choice in what we want to do, but it is a requirement and I love that it takes it outside the classroom and into these special areas as well. That was one thing I wanted to mention.

Brian Lehrer: That's so interesting.

Cheryl: Yes, it is. I'm hoping that it makes a lot of changes moving forward when it's mandated like that then it makes teachers reflect inside how they're going to teach for the upcoming year.

Brian Lehrer: Before we even go on to other aspects, what would you say to some, maybe more conservative parents who might be skeptical and say, "Oh, there's a mandate to indoctrinate our kids in liberal viewpoints about climate change"?

Cheryl: Right, isn't that difficult? It's nice to know that's a mandate in some ways that there have been educators who have sat down revised these standards. I know we talked a lot about the health curriculum and how those standards have been revised recently, but this is also a climate change curriculum that's pertinent to New Jersey. Knowing that my supervisors and my principal and my state can back me up, that's very reassuring. The New Jersey Teachers union, the NJEA, they also put out a lot of resources. If you do end up in a situation like that they can give you language to use.

Brian Lehrer: I'm sure that part of the answer is you're teaching science. That's what's being mandated. It's science. It's not political.

Cheryl: There you go, right. Teaching facts. Absolutely. [chuckles] It's not political but it's nice to have that. My second point was my literacy supervisor, she actually called me in late June, she said she had a parent call her and the parent was concerned. She wanted some answers about what kind of mandated LGBTQ books there are in the schools. Although my supervisor was able to look at the curriculum and say, "In each grade level, these are the books that are required to be taught and none of them have any leanings. As far as exposure for the kids, you would have to talk to the classroom teachers who have hundreds of books to make up the classroom library or the librarians."

She wanted to call me to actually get insight on this and what I had in my library. I shared with her two books that I have that I purposely read. The one book is for my kindergartners, it's called Pink Is for Boys. I don't remember the author, but it's a cute picture book. It starts off by saying, "Pink is for boys and for girls and anybody who likes to dress up and go to a fancy party." Then it says, "Blue is for girls and for boys and anybody who plays on the blue team for tee ball." It goes through all the colors and it's so sweet. It just opens up that conversation with little kids like, "Be proud of yourself for who you are. Everybody's different and everybody's going to like other things and that's okay."

That's how I launch with my kindergartners. By the time they're in fifth grade, last year I did a whole unit on activists and activism mostly inspired by everything I hear about on your show where I read them a Marley Dias book.

Brian Lehrer: Uh oh. Now we're in trouble. Go ahead.

Cheryl: I know. Marley Dias, who is the young woman from Newark, New Jersey, who decided that there weren't enough books about Black girls and she started a movement, with Oprah helping, to try to get as many paperbacks as she could into schools that reflected what she didn't already see.

I teach them about Greta Thunberg, who is wonderful, until you tell the kids that she takes every Friday off of school for protest climate. That's still very interesting that they see a child changing the world.

I also read a book about Harvey Milk. That is what I shared with my supervisor. It's called Pride. It's about the history of the Pride flag and how Harvey needed a symbol to represent the movement that he was starting. It goes through and it talks about how he worked with a person who could create the initial flag and how it evolved. It explains that Harvey loved other men and that Harvey was gay. I do get some giggles sometimes when I read that and I pause and I say, "Is there anything more that we want to talk about here? Because I want to keep reading the story to you. I want you to learn about Harvey Milk."

Brian Lehrer: I have to go onto some other callers in a minute. Do you have to explain to these elementary school students what gay means when you get to that point?

Cheryl: I usually do not but because the book says Harvey was gay and he loved other-- What exactly does it say? It says Harvey was gay and he felt that anybody should love whoever they wanted to love. By fifth grade most children do understand what that word means. It's a beautiful story. We had a wax museum at the end of the year and I had a student choose dress up as Harvey Milk [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Cheryl, thank you so much for telling us your story. By the way my producer looked it up. Pink Is for Boys was written by Robb Pearlman, just to give the author some credit on the air. Cheryl, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Rosa on Staten Island, you're on WNYC. Hi, Rosa.

Rosa: Hi, Brian. Nice to speak to you today.

Brian Lehrer: You too. You're a librarian I see?

Rosa: I'm a first-year school librarian. I'm actually coming out of NYPL. I actually had the pleasure of introducing you, you came to our branch on Staten Island.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, I know you. I remember that.

Rosa: I don't know if I'm allowed to name my former workplace. Yes, I do too. I guess I have a lot of anxiety about switching to the DOE, not being a librarian but facing any potential challenges. I feel like I had the might of a great institution of NYPL behind me and I really didn't face it either as a children's librarian or as a branch manager, but I'm going to be a middle school librarian. I think that is an age where they jump greatly as readers and are curious. Even as a public librarian, kids would-- not secretly, but-

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you this. As you make the move from working for a New York Public Library branch to working in a middle school library is anybody training you? I assume there's some training that's going on as you get ready to enter your first year. Is there any training that goes on that has anything to do with being prepared for culture war-driven than challenges?

Rosa: I wouldn't say there's not, but I do feel very alone. I will say that being a singular librarian in the library and of course it's a new administration and experience for me. You don't have that team effect when you're working with a team of other librarians as you live in the community. I've gone to some technical trainings with the Department of Library Services for the DOE and they're great. They have a lot of accessible support and even scripts or talking points if you do receive book challenges. I'd say in practical terms, now I'm angsty about being a sole librarian coming out of a workplace full of them.

Brian Lehrer: Rosa, I really enjoyed that appearance that I did at that Public Library branch on Staten Island at which you introduced me. The audience was fabulous. People asked such great questions. There was so much curiosity in that room, and I loved doing that.

Rosa: I'm no longer an employee. [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: Yes. [chuckles] Good luck as you go from New York Public Library librarian to school librarian. Good luck. Nina in Yorktown Heights, you're on WNYC. Hi, Nina.

Nina: Hi Brian. Thank you for taking my call. I'm currently a part-time librarian. It was just a community college but I did just shy of 40 years as a middle school and high school librarian actually also from elementary. Over that time, clearly, I've dealt with some of these kinds of challenges and issues in the culture wars. There were just a few things I thought maybe I could share with your listeners. One of them is that this isn't new. This is battle in the war.

I remember back in the late '70s the John Birch Society published lists of topics that parents should be on the alert for and that included every kind of science fiction story. It was a massive list that was published, from my reading, in a professional journal called Voice Of Youth Advocates. That was back in the '70s.

I know that in somewhere around 1989, I was in a middle school, and I'd been there for quite a few years already, and I did an annual display for a banned book's week in September. I had my principal show up on my doorstep immediately that, this was problematic and it was going to have parents up in arms. Actually, I did essentially the same display for another 20 some odd years.

I had a conversation with him about, "Let's have a conversation. If parents were concerned, we can talk about these things." Of course, the books that were on display were classics which speaks to something I know that you spoke to an earlier caller about, which is books that I know that I had on my shelves and would talk to students about and work with classes for years that are now, 20, 30 years later, first being questioned in this newest battle in this war. This isn't new and different. This is just the next battle in the war.

Brian Lehrer: The next battle by people with similar views to 40 years ago in the war is what you're saying, right?

Nina: Exactly. In your intro you asked about the difference between selection and censorship. I would like people to understand that selection, A, is a process, B, it's something we're taught as librarians. It's a dynamic experience. It's not a fixed, "Okay, here are the rules and just follow the rules." It's a process that is also contextual. It's based on the community. It's the larger community in which you live but also the school district and the individual school communities.

Brian Lehrer: That is so, so interesting to hear that context and everything that you said, Nina. Thank you very much. All right, Christina in the Bronx, you're going to get our last word. We've only got 30 seconds left in the segment. They are yours.

Christina: Hi, I'm Christina. I am also a school librarian at Bronx and I wanted to point out that the Office of Library Services does an incredible job supporting school librarians. We have a process for challenging books. They help us to curate school-appropriate books and also defend students' rights to read what they want. In New York City, we also follow what the American Library Association guidelines are in terms of protecting reader privacy for students and also for staff members. If someone came in and said, "Let me see every book a child has checked out in the last three years," the software system that we use now has allowed us [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: It's so interesting and good to know that there's such a robust training program in the New York City public schools. Thanks for all your calls, school librarians.

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