Good morning. It is Wednesday. We will meet the librarians of the year and find out why they were chosen. We will also meet someone who will be working with them after moving to Brooklyn from 1,500 miles away.
It’s only the fourth day of the year, but we already know a lot about 2023. We know that Motor Trend’s car of the year is the Genesis G90 and Sailing World’s boat of the year is the Beneteau First 36. We also know that the color of the year is Viva Magenta 18-1750, according to Pantone, whose color-matching system is used in art, printing and fashion.
And now we know that the librarians of the year are five members of staff from the Brooklyn Public Library’s “Books Unbanned” team.
They were recognized by Library Journal for creating “Books Unbanned” to reach readers in places where new restrictions could force books off library shelves and out of classrooms. “Books Unbanned” issues library cards that provide electronic access to the Brooklyn library’s digital and audio collections. So far, 6,000 teens have applied for tickets through Books Unbanned since the program launched last spring.
Library Journal said that “Books Unbanned” was “ambitious, wide-ranging and had the potential to influence thousands of young readers” and had “proven success well beyond their original expectations”.
“While ‘Books Unbanned’ was originally planned for a limited time, it has taken on a life of its own — one that continues to grow and change,” Library Journal wrote announcing the choice. “Thanks to everyone involved, ‘Books Unbanned’ has been a success, with 52,000 checkouts to date.”
Nick Higgins, the chief librarian of the Brooklyn Public Library and one of five librarians named by the Library Journal, sounded elated. Library Journal “is read by the profession,” he said. And the list of previous winners includes Carla Hayden, the Librarian of the Year in 1995, when she was the director of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore’s public library system. She is now the Librarian of Congress.
Higgins and the four other librarians began “Books Unbanned” at a time when efforts to ban books had spread across the country, with parents, activists, and conservative lawmakers using aggressive tactics to ban subjects and titles they disapproved of. to denounce.
Those maneuvers contradicted what Higgins and the other librarians saw as the fundamental purpose of a library as a place that “would reflect the whole community,” he said. “That includes all kinds of voices, abilities, backgrounds, experiences and income levels. Forcibly removing some of those stories is at odds with what libraries and even democracy stand for.”
A particular concern of the “Books Unbanned” team was the message that book bans sent to teen readers, given “the particular flavor of book bans now” that target titles by or about lesbians, gay men, transgender people or black people, Higgins said. .
“Young people are seeing stories that appeal to them being taken off the shelves,” Higgins said, which he called a signal to young people that they don’t matter in their communities.
The team also wanted to acknowledge the librarians at the desks dealing with angry people yelling at them about a book they found on the shelves. “We wanted to figure out a way to give them some support, to help them get through this and find ways to push back,” he said.
A new employee who fits in well
One of the Brooklyn library’s newest contributors is Summer Boismier, above, who discovered “Books Unbanned” when she lived 1,500 miles away — and paid a price for her discovery.
She was a teacher who placed the QR code for “Books Unbanned” in her classroom in Norman, Oklahoma when school started in late August. She was soon placed on administrative leave and summoned to a meeting with school administrators. This came after a parent complained that she discussed the QR code in class and after Oklahoma lawmakers approved a limit on what public schools are allowed to teach about race and gender.
The Secretary of State for Education, Ryan Walters, demanded that her teaching license be revoked. She resigned before officials could and visited the Brooklyn Public Library a few weeks later. “When I left, it felt like I was leaving the house,” she said. “It wasn’t the building or even the books themselves that created that feeling, it was the people. The Librarians.”
One thing led to another, and last month she moved to Brooklyn to join the library as a teen initiative project manager.
Boismier said 2022 was “utterly tragic” because the book ban had escalated. “The people most affected are the most disenfranchised,” she said. “These are our young people. We’ve all seen the images, the video, of contentious school board meetings or people talking about what I think is a misnomer, which is parents’ rights. I’ve talked about teachers’ rights and the right freedom of expression in a classroom, but ultimately it’s about the right of students to read what they want.”
But she said she was hopeful about the direction of the national conversation about book bans. “We’ve seen the headlines of young people saying, enough is enough. That’s the courage it takes to stand up to adults. I don’t know if I had been 15 in 2022, I could have done that.”
Boismier said she was adjusting to Brooklyn, a place she said she’d assumed was “like my mom’s subdivision.”
“I can’t seem to get the hang of the subway,” she said, adding that she had “googled the MTA” — the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that runs the subways — “which is incredibly cathartic if you’ve never done it before.” have done.”
Weather
Prepare for another showery day, with temperatures hovering around the mid-60s. Showers continue overnight, with temperatures dropping above 40 degrees.
ALTERNATIVE SIDE PARKING
Valid until Friday (Three Kings).
The latest New York news
Dear Diary:
First a regular slice of pizza and iced tea
then a walk towards Central Park
Free drawing at the Frick —
Fragonard, Goya, van Dyck.
Then, still broke, abandoned, alone,
walk down Madison Avenue toward 86th
Street, shop windows in every boutique.
In my favorite bistro,
sacrifice to enjoy two glasses of wine,
usually Malbec
and later a Ruby Port.
Journal at the bistro table, drawing a
better blueprint for myself while eating
steamed vegetables and duck confit, or
sometimes flatbread pizza with figs
and cheese. For dessert bread pudding.
Endless nude models sign at the League
filling smooth newsprint blocks
and beautiful sketchbooks
back home in the Bronx show
portraits and life drawings until my death
father, his face so happy, even in his
delirium and fever, flushing among the naked
Singing to my father at his bedside, holding on
his hand, trying to remember the immaterial
essence of anatomy beyond his illness
bones, trying to keep my emotions stable
and yet –
as graceful and graceful as a compassionate art model, posing naked on a stage in a classroom
for me, a caregiver and a daughter
drawing strength, trying not to fall apart.
— Tiffany Osedra Miller
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.