Episode 10-15: A book that’s been banned or challenged in any state in 2022

Reading With Libraries season ten logo

Thank you for joining us again on our book group and Reader’s advisory podcast! 

We are here to talk about books and share library ideas!

This season we have been exploring all new ideas for books and book suggestions, so you can expand your reading horizons, and share more information with your library community. We looked at prompts from the 2023 PopSugar reading challenge this season. 

And now we are wrapping up the season! We’ve really enjoyed reading books with you, and having book group fun!  If you have missed any RWL, our archives are on the website. You can go back to cmle.org any time and listen to any of our podcast episodes. The book group is always here for you!

This week is pretty frustrating to discuss. We are librarians, and CMLE helps to support over three hundred different kinds of libraries across Central MN. We support the freedom to read, and the freedom to choose the books you want to read. If you have kids, you can encourage them to read the books you like and think are good. But it does not give anyone the right to tell other people they cannot read and enjoy a book. It’s so wrong to keep books away from people, just because of the irrational fears or prejudices of a few individuals.

Check out our show notes page for links to our beverages, our resources, and the books we share today.

Beverages:

This is, of course, a book group. And every book group needs to have beverages, so 

you really get the feel for your reading! 

We are not giving the terrible people who want to ban books the satisfaction of having a bad time in book group this week. So we are enjoying beverages from the article Top 16 Funny Cocktails for Your Next Party. “Whether it’s a funny name or simply an unconventional set of ingredients, funny cocktails have a way of sparking joy and putting a smile on your face.” Find something fun to enjoy, from this article or elsewhere!

Baby Yoda Margarita

The perfect sip for the Baby Yoda lover in your life, this adorable cocktail looks just like everyone’s favorite Star Wars baby, with lime wedges for ears and big blueberry eyes. Of course, the flavors are all your standard margarita, but the presentation, complete with Baby Yoda’s robe, is what really sets this cocktail apart.

Ingredients

The Cocktail

Baby Yoda

Instructions

  1. Add the tequila and margarita mix to a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake and set aside.
  2. Form the brown paper around the stem of the glass. Tie with twine in the middle and secure with a knot.
  3. Strain the cocktail into the glass.
  4. Slice a sliver into the lime wedge and place on the rim of the glass to form the ears.
  5. Float two blueberries in the cocktail as eyes.

To make Baby Yoda’s outfit, cut a piece of butcher or kraft paper that is the height of the glass stem, and about 6-8 inches long. This piece of paper gets wrapped and crumpled around the stem of the glass and tied with string.

Blackberry Mojito

A fun twist on a classic spring and summertime drink, this Blackberry Mojito is ideal for fancy brunches or simply sipping on the patio on a hot July day. Start with some white rum, simple blackberry syrup, and several blackberries to muddle at the bottom, add mint leaves, and finish with club soda. It’s tart and tasty.

Ingredients

  • 5 – 6 fresh blackberries
  • 4 fresh mint leaves
  • 1 1/2 ounces simple syrup or blackberry syrup
  • 3/4 ounce fresh lime juice
  • 1/4 cup club soda, chilled
  • 1 to 1 1/2 ounces white rum
  • 1 cup of ice cubes
  • Garnish with fresh sprigs of mint and fresh whole blackberries

Instructions

  1. Rinse blackberries and mint leaves under cool tap water. Gently pat dry with paper towels.
  2. Place blackberries, mint leaves, simple or blackberry syrup and lime juice into a small bowl.
  3. Gently mash the mixture with a muddler. Do not shred the mint leaves, rather simply bruise them to release the essential oils.
  4. Stir in club soda and rum.
  5. Strain to remove the blackberry seeds and remnants of the mint leaves.
  6. Pour into chilled stemware.
  7. Add ice and garnish with fresh sprigs of mint and several fresh whole blackberries.
  8. Serve.

Genre Discussion:

It is so frustrating and annoying to even have to pay enough attention to idiot book banning fanatics to have to mention them. But this small number of absolutely terrible humans are causing a significantly outsized amount of damage and destruction to libraries and to people’s lives. It would be nice to be able to feel sorry for these small-minded people – so terrified of things outside their own limited experience that they have to try to pretend reality is not true. But I am just not capable of that. 

Do not stand for this. If you have kids in a school, be sure you speak up. Be sure you tell the school board and the administration that you are not going to stand for letting a few dingdongs make the decision to hide books from your kids. If you go to a public library, be sure you tell the board and the city or county that you will not sit still while they hide books from you.

Book banning is not about giving parents rights. It’s not about being family-friendly. It is only about small minds and fear. It’s about bigots who want to pretend that LGBTQ people do not exist. That black people do not exist. That anyone who does not live life exactly as the pathetic scared people is not real. Trying to demonize the people who do not conform to that narrow view of life is just shameful. Trying to attack the people who share information, who check out books, and who build bridges across communities – this is unforgivable. 

At least, we have the cold comfort of knowing that history will judge these people harshly. There are no book banning groups that ever look good, and that are ever on the good side of history. We know they are losers; and when they are remembered it will only be for living that loser lifestyle on a grand scale.

Suggested Reading Resources:

Our Book Discussion

We have our beverages, we are familiar with this week’s genre, let’s get to the book discussion! While the silly-minded might try to hide books from us all, we are going to take this time to celebrate the books they wanted to destroy. This week we share books for you to enjoy, to learn from, and to make your life just a little bit better. 

(And if you take a little extra joy in reading these books, and being able to thwart the bozos who want to burn these books, along with the people in them – who could possibly blame you?)

We will give you a list of all the books we share today. In this week’s show notes, you can click on any title to get more information; the link will take you to one of Minnesota’s favorite independent bookstores: Drury Lane. Browse around while you are there, and maybe you will find something else you enjoy!  

Stamped (For Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You, by Jason Reynolds, Ibram X. Kendi, Sonja Cherry-Paul 

This chapter book edition of the groundbreaking #1 bestseller by luminaries Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds is an essential introduction to the history of racism and antiracism in America

RACE. Uh-oh. The R-word. 

But actually talking about race is one of the most important things to learn how to do.

Adapted from the award-winning, bestselling Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, this book takes readers on a journey from present to past and back again. Kids will discover where racist ideas came from, identify how they impact America today, and meet those who have fought racism with antiracism. Along the way, they’ll learn how to identify and stamp out racist thoughts in their own lives. 

Ibram X. Kendi’s research, Jason Reynolds’s and Sonja Cherry-Paul’s writing, and Rachelle Baker’s art come together in this vital read, enhanced with a glossary, timeline, and more. 

Gender Queer, by Maia Kobabe

In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears.

Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.

Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan

Based on true events—and narrated by a Greek Chorus of the generation of gay men lost to AIDS—Two Boys Kissing follows Harry and Craig, two seventeen-year-olds who are about to take part in a 32-hour marathon of kissing to set a new Guinness World Record. While the two increasingly dehydrated and sleep-deprived boys are locking lips, they become a focal point in the lives of other teens dealing with universal questions of love, identity, and belonging. 

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, by Nikole Hannah-Jones

(An additional note: “Three bills have recently been introduced by state legislators in Arkansas, Iowa, and Mississippi arguing that the lessons in The 1619 Project misrepresent U.S. history. The Arkansas and Mississippi bills call it “a racially divisive and revisionist account” while he Iowa bill claims that it “attempts to deny or obfuscate the fundamental principles upon which the United States was founded.” “)

In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States.

The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project” issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself.

This is a book that speaks directly to our current moment, contextualizing the systems of race and caste within which we operate today. It reveals long-glossed-over truths around our nation’s founding and construction—and the way that the legacy of slavery did not end with emancipation, but continues to shape contemporary American life.

We Are the Ants, by Shaun David Hutchinson

Henry Denton has spent years being periodically abducted by aliens. Then the aliens give him an ultimatum: The world will end in 144 days, and all Henry has to do to stop it is push a big red button.

Only he isn’t sure he wants to.

After all, life hasn’t been great for Henry. His mom is a struggling waitress held together by a thin layer of cigarette smoke. His brother is a jobless dropout who just knocked someone up. His grandmother is slowly losing herself to Alzheimer’s. And Henry is still dealing with the grief of his boyfriend’s suicide last year.

Wiping the slate clean sounds like a pretty good choice to him.

But Henry is a scientist first, and facing the question thoroughly and logically, he begins to look for pros and cons: in the bully who is his perpetual one-night stand, in the best friend who betrayed him, in the brilliant and mysterious boy who walked into the wrong class. Weighing the pain and the joy that surrounds him, Henry is left with the ultimate choice: push the button and save the planet and everyone on it…or let the world—and his pain—be destroyed forever. 

Real Live Boyfriends: Yes. Boyfriends, plural. If my life weren’t complicated, I wouldn’t be Ruby Oliver (Ruby Oliver Quartet #4), by E. Lockhart

From E. Lockhart, author of the highly acclaimed, New York Times bestseller We Were Liars, which John Green called “utterly unforgettable,” comes Real Live Boyfriends, the fourth book in the uproarious and heartwarming Ruby Oliver novels that finds Ruby Oliver as neurotic and hyperverbal as ever as she interviews her friends for a documentary on love and popularity and while doing so turns up some uncomfortable truths.

She’s lost most of her friends. She’s lost her true love more than once. She’s lost her grandmother, her job, her reputation, and possibly her mind. But she’s never lost her sense of humor. The Ruby Oliver books are the record of her survival.

(bonus note: “The fourth novel of author E. Lockhart’s “Ruby Oliver” quartet is the most controversial, thanks to sexual content and slut-shaming, and was part of school book bans six times in the 2021-2022 school year.”)

Almost Perfect, by Brian Katcher

Everyone has that one line they swear they’ll never cross, the one thing they say they’ll never do. We draw the line. Maybe we even believe it.

Sage Hendricks was my line.

Logan Witherspoon befriends Sage Hendricks at a time when he no longer trusts or believes in people. He’s drawn to Sage, with her constant smile and sexy voice, and his feelings for her grow so strong that he can’t resist kissing her. 

Sage finally discloses a big secret: she was born a boy. Enraged, frightened, and feeling betrayed, Logan lashes out at her–a reaction he soon desperately wishes he could take back. Once his anger cools, Logan is filled with incredible regret, and all he wants is to repair his friendship with Sage.

But it’s hard to replace something that’s been broken—and it’s even harder to find your way back to friendship when you began with love.

Conclusion:

Thank you so much for joining us on Reading With Libraries! Join us next Thursday with another topic or genre and many more books to share and discuss. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don’t miss a single episode! 

And if you want to hear more about the work we do in libraries or expand your library skills, check out our podcast Linking Our Libraries! Right now that is dropping short episodes with a few book suggestions; so subscribe to get that every Tuesday.

Bring your book ideas, bring your beverages, and join us back here on Thursday!