That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America

“Hell hath no fury like a librarian scorned,” asserts middle-school librarian Jones in her stinging debut. In 2022, Jones attended a library board meeting in Lafeyette, La., to defend making books with LGBTQ themes available to children and teens. A few days later, two men who also attended the meeting started harassing Jones on Facebook, calling her a pedophile and a porn pusher (“As if a kid could be looking for The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and whoops, there’s The Joy of Sex,” Jones writes), which unleashed a flood of bullying messages and death threats. Jones sued both men for defamation, but a judge dismissed her case on the grounds that she was a “limited public figure.” In tandem with these events, Jones catalogs other censorship fights across the country, giving kudos to librarians including Roxana Caivano in Roxbury, N.J., who have also spoken out against book bans. Jones’s prose is workmanlike, but her message is bracing, and she delivers it with admirable fire and focus. This is an inspiring portrait of resilience and a galvanizing call to “speak up for intellectual freedom.” Photos. Agent: Sara N. Fisk, Tobias Agency. (Aug.)