JAY FELLOWES writes:

Thank you for that article on libraries by Alan. He is such a talented writer and astute observer of society.

I have worked in libraries for twenty-five years, and agree that the field is no longer run by “grown-ups”.  I have fond memories of the librarians of yore, but the people entering the field are now activists, much like teachers. The sole place I have encountered “pronouns” in my rural area is in e-mails from fellow library directors. These are frequently sent to rally others to fight “censorship”, the censorship of sexually explicit materials from the children’s section. I have asked to be removed from these partisan e-mail lists, and now my fellow directors do not return my calls.

I cannot begin to describe the drivel that I am being sent to add to the collection. Books for children these days are ugly, with illustrations that are primitive and devoid of artistic talent. They have overt, preachy messages. These serve in complete contrast to the books I enjoyed as a child like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Frog and Toad are Friends. I can visualize the illustrations from memory of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery and Gareth Williams’ drawings in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books. Homeschooling families are the bedrock of my circulation numbers, but when I try to buy the classics they request, my state board tells me these books are “too old”, and I cannot purchase any books using state funds with a copyright that exceeds seven years. Why is this, I wonder?

Adult literature these days tends to feature graphically descriptive violence and sexuality that ambushes you without warning as you read a book. Disturbing topics like child sexual abuse are found more often in adult fiction that is meant to titillate and entertain.  The Young Adult section is to be avoided altogether. My teenage daughter refers to it as the “vampire lesbian section”!

As Alan mentioned, libraries are fighting to be “relevant”, and that is why they are transitioning to entertainment and events. They rely on public funds and want to be perceived as valuable to the community. This is a valid concern, as people simply do not read as much as they used to, and even parents do not take their children to the library with the frequency I enjoyed as a small child.  The culture has shifted. My own library was a ghost town before I took over.

The Bible warns against despair. There is always something we can do to “put on the armor of God”.  As a library director I have the ability to throw non-suitable books literally in the trash and this is oh-so-rewarding. I can invite wonderful guest speakers. I can select children’s books that honor goodness and use public funds to do so.  But you don’t have to be a branch director to improve your library. Maybe that smutty book in the youth section needs to be accidentally re-shelved in the adult section near the dusty old cookbooks. Maybe your state has a mechanism where you can request certain books be evaluated for age level appropriateness. Many states are going this route now. Or maybe you can plan an event to meet at your library that is more wholesome. Some friends are starting lending libraries in their homes to retain physical copies of beloved books as authors are being “cancelled” from the public sphere. I recently worked in a school library in Canada, where the powers that be removed all the Little House on the Prairie books because of their (honest) portrayal of Indians. The activists sure are busy, but are we?

— Comments —

Kathy G. writes:

May God bless Jay Fellowes! I seldom go to the library anymore. Our local branch is stuffed with movies, shelves of paperback mysteries and romances. I have accumulated quite a few books, including classic lit. that was dumped by the library in book sales, including a set of Douglas Southall Freeman’s biography of R.E. Lee; the kid’s books we all grew up with like Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, The Yearling, Old Yeller, Dickens, Zane Grey, etc. Now even the book sales are full of the paperback thrillers and romances, as well, so I watch for gardening books, or a copy of the original Tragedy and Hope, lol. I consider most popular movies entertainment, and resent tax funds going to supply movies to people, but, like the schools, the libraries are being repurposed to discourage literacy, reading, and thinking, the opposite of their supposed mission. Plus, now they have added the Marxist agenda, and it’s myriad causes and offshoots, to the library. “Betty Zane” was memory-holed years ago due to a depiction of a “shiftless” and untrustworthy slave owned by the family, I only learned of Betty because my mother read it growing up and recommended it to me when I was young. Now I am learning that Agatha Christie is being altered to be politically correct, so I suppose I should be watching for her books. But, never fear, as I saw on the “New Arrival” shelf sometime back, I can always check out Cannibalism, the Last Taboo for my intellectual edification.

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