As reported last week in The Sun, there are more than 30 library systems and four municipalities in New Jersey with book sanctuaries, Moorestown and Pennsauken among them. Nationwide, according to the Chicago public library, sanctuaries number 3,000 in all 50 states.
A book sanctuary is a space where access to books and the right to read them are at the forefront of a library’s mission, according to the public library in Hoboken, the first book sanctuary city in New Jersey.
Adopted by resolution, sanctuaries commit to at least one of the following: collecting and protecting endangered books, making those titles broadly accessible, hosting talks and events on banned books and educating others on the history of such bans.
“With book bans on the rise, particular groups have indicated that they would like libraries or schools to not include books that they don’t like,” said Joan Serpico, director of the Moorestown public library, which became a sanctuary last month.
“Libraries have always traditionally supported the freedom for their patrons to read what they want, and not let individuals influence other people’s rights or infringe upon (their) rights.”
According to the Washington, D.C.-based Urban Libraries Council, from July 2022 to June the following year, there were 3,362 instances of individual books banned, affecting 1,557 titles. That represented an increase of 33% from the 2021-’22 school year.
PEN America – a free-speech advocacy organization that maintains an index of books banished in the U.S. – notes that the most-banned titles in the first half of the 2022-’23 school year included Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,”; “This Book is Gay,” by Juno Dawson; “The Handmaid’s Tale: The Graphic Novel,” by Margaret Atwood; and “Push,” by Sapphire.
They are among a list of 11 books that were banned in at least 10 or more districts around the country in the aforementioned school year. Ten of the 11 authors and illustrators are women. Four of the books were written by authors of color and four by LGBTQ+ individuals. By July 2022, PEN reported 139 more banished titles.
The blame for bans has fallen on right-wing or conservative politicians and conservative parent and advocacy groups, according to PEN, which has identified at least 50 organizations involved in local- and state-level bans, some with hundreds of chapters. Most of these groups have sprung up since 2021, as reported in Education Week the following year.
Brian Camenker, executive director of one of those groups, MassResistance, told Education Week that he thinks free speech groups such as PEN America are “on the wrong side of history.” He maintains that most books parents are complaining about and trying to get banned contain inappropriate sexual material and that no one should be advocating for pornography in school libraries, a claim refuted by many librarians.
So who should decide whether to ban a book? Libraries have long-established policies and procedures that allow users to submit their concerns about certain titles. The book sanctuary resolution ensures those procedures are followed, that people are heard.
“Everybody is safe and seen and valued at the library …,” Moorestown resident Amy Penwell told The Sun. “This is what we’re doing. Hopefully there will be some programming that goes along with being a book sanctuary that just encourages community discussion about reading and books and stories, and draws us closer together as readers, and just highlights the role that our library plays in our community.”
