Amanda Jones wrote "That Librarian" about the death threats she faced after advocating against removing books from public library shelves.
North Carolina public school teachers have been tasked with cataloguing their books. Lindsay Talley, whose classroom library is pictured here, says hers will be a time-consuming task.
Amanda Jones is the author of "That Librarian."

Louisiana public school librarian Amanda Jones loves helping kids find the right book.

It’s her 25th year working in the Livingston Parish school district, the same one she attended as a kid. In 2022, she spoke at a local public library hearing about a challenge to remove a book about teen puberty, sexuality and consent from the shelves. She showed up with other community members to argue against banning any books from public libraries.

Soon, social media attacks started. She says commenters called her a "groomer" and a pedophile, publishing the name of her school and saying she was giving children pornography and erotica. Jones thought no one would believe them, but they did. She says she didn’t leave her room for four days, crying so hard her eyes swelled shut. She had debilitating panic attacks and was in and out of the hospital for two months. Jones brought a defamation lawsuit against a pair of conservative bloggers – seeking damages of $1 and an apology – that's still ongoing. Whatever happens, she says she’s committed to staying on the job.

Later, Jones would become one of the faces of the fight against book banning. She has since published a book about her experience called “That Librarian” and made it on TIME100 Next (with an appreciation written by actor and avid reader Sarah Jessica Parker).

Jones is just one example of a new landscape that teachers in America are navigating amid increasing book bans and public pressure.

Teachers grapple with book bans, new legislation

Kristen Rusnak, a school librarian in Florida, has spent years helping students in middle and high school pluck the perfect read from shelves.

“Never have I felt such pressure and scrutiny in my entire library career. My colleagues are in the same boat. We are on the front lines of a battle we did not create,” she wrote in an email to USA TODAY.

PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for free expression, found 6,870 total instances of book banning in the '24-'25 year. That’s down from the previous year’s record high of 10,046, but more than double the total of when PEN started tracking in ’21-’22.

“The confusion surrounding the banning process only adds to the stress. And the reasonings for the request for removal of books constantly evolve,” she said. “Trying to keep up with all the changes in policy and what is considered ‘appropriate’ reading material for students is like bailing water out of a sinking ship. … This hurts my heart to the core.”

Third grade teacher Lindsay Talley of North Carolina says she has never had a parent express concern about her classroom library. She was stunned to see a notice from administrators weeks into the school year that required teachers to scan all their books to an online database under a new state law.

‘It feels so belittling’: Teachers’ judgment called into question

Beyond the imposition of another laborious task, Talley says, requiring teachers to log classroom books is “belittling” and erodes trust in teachers. She hasn’t heard that her district intends to remove any books, but she believes it opens doors to challenges. She worries parents will think teachers are being asked to catalog books because of some wrongdoing rather than pressure from the state. She’s concerned that curriculums could be changed at legislators’ whims, too.

“It really is just this scanning of the barcode, but it feels like I’m handing over the reins,” Talley says. “They trust me to be in a classroom all day with their kids. I feel like it doesn’t make sense to not trust my book selection.”

Talley has spent more than a decade and her own money curating a bookshelf with relevant and educational titles that are appropriate for the diverse reading levels in her classroom, she says.

“While we are in the classroom, we are not indoctrinating your children into a belief system,” Talley says. “We want to teach them to read. We do want to teach them that people have different experiences and lenses for the world, because it creates empathy. But we really don’t have time in our day to do the things that they’re accusing us of.”

Parental rights are the rallying cry for many book challenges, most of which come from groups rather than individuals, according to the American Library Association. The ALA found 72% of complaints against books are filed by “pressure groups and government entities that include elected officials, board members and administrators."

Jones empathizes with the thinking that parents should have a say in what their children are reading, but she believes it’s more productive to talk to parents individually.

“They forget that we’re parents, too,” Jones says. “I also believe it’s every parent’s right to challenge a book, and so I take that seriously as well. If there’s a parent that doesn’t like a book … I’m going to sit down and talk to them and say: ‘This is what the book is about. Here are the reviews. This is how I chose the book for our library.’”

If parents still don’t think the book is right for their child, she says, she’ll help them find a better fit.

Book bans come from a few loud voices

Heather Garcia, a librarian in Tallahassee, Florida, for 14 years, says she’s seeing some of the book ban fever break.

She points to a dispute over a Billie Jean King biography, "I Am Billie Jean King," in her district. An elementary grade parent filed a complaint asking the biography be removed from the school because "I object to material that discusses being gay and what it means to be gay." After a hearing, the book remained on the school shelf.

“I think that kind of sent a clear message at least in our district that we were not here to let one group decide what all children should read,” Garcia tells USA TODAY. “They were welcome to decide what their own personal children read, but they were not welcome to be the deciding voice for all children.”

As for the spirit of the banning, which saw her and others take on the “herculean task” of going title by title in both the school library and the personalized classroom libraries of each teacher, Garcia says she thinks it was “targeted at marginalized voices, authors of color, LGBTQ narratives” and “addressing historical truths.”

“You always want your kids to have … critical thinking and empathy and respect for others and other cultures,” she says. “When you’re reading a book, you’re not looking in a mirror. … You’re looking at a window.”

As for the igniting emotion behind the parents hoping to pull certain titles, Garcia says, the group is a lot smaller than you might think.

“I don’t feel that it’s so many parents. I think it’s so few very loud parents.”

Tina Descovich, cofounder of Moms for Liberty, a conservative organization that advocates for parental rights in classrooms and beyond, says parents should feel empowered to challenge school curriculum and book content. On a grassroots level, members bring complaints against school content perceived as sexually explicit, anti-liberty, promoting critical race theory and more. They endorse political candidates from school board members to US senators, and supported Donald Trump in the presidential election. Through its Moms for Liberty Foundation, the group donates books to schools it says "teach civics, history, and American values," and promotes series such as the Tuttle Twins and Great Battles for Boys.

"When you just shut people down and label them and call them names, the discussions aren’t had and it's not in the best interest of children," Descovich told USA TODAY.

At DOD schools, employees face the ultimate bind

Douglas Lehrer planned to work at the DoDEA, the Department of Defense’s education system, which runs schools across the globe serving military and NATO families, for most of his life.

A teacher at SHAPE Elementary at NATO headquarters in Mons, Belgium, he resigned just shy of a decade in August, citing the increased banning of materials in accordance with executive orders from the Trump administration and directives from what's now called the Department of War.

“Within days of the inauguration, we were getting directives and EOs regarding gender ideology and, they called it ‘discriminatory equity ideology topics,’” says Lehrer, who has since moved with his husband to Germany.

He sounded the alarm, he says, when a barrage of “vague directives” about educational materials began arriving, and he became concerned there was no paper trail. The materials banned were disproportionally related to the LGBTQ+ community and other minority groups, he says.

Though Lehrer wanted to push back, he said, it was “painful” to watch colleagues comply out of fear or self-preservation.

“Not really many people were willing to speak up. They were afraid,” he said. He compared the moment to 1930s Germany and teared up when describing a monument to burned books he passed in his new home city, Berlin. He worries about LGBTQ+ students and students of color who may be too young to understand the moral compromises some educators needed to make to remove the materials for the sake of their own survival.

“It’s a loss of knowledge. It’s a reshaping of history to fit a certain person or people’s viewpoints, and it’s a violation of our students’ constitutional rights to be able to have access to this knowledge and to be able to form their own thoughts and opinions about it.”

How to talk to kids about book bans

In states not as affected by book bans, some teachers use today's political climate in their lesson plans.

Ryan Brazil, a public school teacher from California, hosts a banned books project for her fourth and fifth grade students every year to weave “real-world situations” into writing assignments. She’ll start by sharing a book with them – examples include “Captain Underpants” by Dav Pilkey, “The Snowy Day” by Ezra Jack Keats and “Julián Is a Mermaid” by Jessica Love – and then she reveals that they’ve been banned before.

“It blows their minds,” she says. “They don’t understand.”

The project is both investigative and argumentative – the students must research when and why it was banned but also write whether they either agree or disagree with it. The exercise has led to “rich discussions,” Brazil says.

Parents have largely supported the project, but when Brazil posted about it online, she got comments saying she was “indoctrinating” her students. She argues that “giving them the skills to be able to think critically (and) analyze information” does the opposite.

“Books are such a great kind of window into practicing empathy and compassion and kindness,” Brazil says. “If we can pull that out of them and help them just understand the world, help them understand other people's perspectives – oh my gosh. Imagine if we all were more empathetic to other people's perspectives? We would live in a much less violent, happier place.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Book bans are being 'normalized.' What does that mean for classrooms?

Reporting by Clare Mulroy and Anna Kaufman, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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