by Marley Dias
I just checked out this audiobook because it was recommended by librarian Amanda Jones in her book That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America. Jones tells of how she saw Marley Dias on an episode of The View, talking about how she as a Black girl was only being given the opportunity in school to read books about “white boys and their dogs.” She started her own campaign called #1000 Black Girl Books, which by now has amassed a database of over 13,000 books featuring Black girls as main characters. Jones cites this experience as a moment of awakening in her job as a small town Louisiana school librarian, and set her on a determined and risky path to diversify her school library so that all her students would be able to see themselves reflected in literature.
In my career as a school librarian I always loved the North Star image of books as being “mirrors and windows.” A kid (and everyone!) needs to be able to look into the mirror of a book and see themselves, and also to look into the window of a book to gain an empathetic understanding of people who are different. Somehow the book banners just don’t seem to get this idea.