I Read Banned Books, 2017

“A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone” - Mary Jo Godwin

It is once again Banned Books Week, a time of year when we celebrate our freedom to read. Some years I set out to read a controversial book with the idea that exposure to new ideas and life experiences will help me to grow as a human being. Other years I am surprised to learn that a book I read and loved is considered controversial. This year, I've found myself frequently considering Mary Jo Godwin's quote about how it is likely that each of us will be offended by something on the library's shelves.

As a librarian, I consider myself a champion of intellectual freedom, but even so I can admit that there are books and movies in our library that I don't like. If I am asked for a personal opinion, I will likely say that X or Y isn't for me, but if I'm doing my job right no one will feel shame for liking something I don't. Because, in the end, this job is about helping you to find the information and entertainment that you want and need.

I recently read a middle grade novel that explores the idea that some books contain things that are not just offensive, but outright dangerous to readers. Specifically, children. The protagonist of Ban This Book by Alan Gratz is a fourth grader who loves the escape of reading more than anything, and then her favorite book ever (From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg) is removed from her school's library.

Gratz does an excellent job of exploring book challenges and their impacts.* I think Ban This Book has the potential to spark some interesting discussions, and I wish that I'd had it to read when The Giver by Lois Lowry was removed from my fifth grade classroom. My parents handled the situation well, working with the parents of some of my friends to create a mother/daughter book discussion group so that we could read The Giver outside of school. It dealt with some challenging issues and I was glad to be able to talk about it with my mom, but it was still strange to have a book that I was forbidden from mentioning at school.

Based on ALA's Top Ten Most Challenged Books List for 2016, if I were in middle school today, it's possible that the controversial book would be George by Alex Gino. George is a story written for middle-grade readers about a child who wants more than anything to play the part of Charlotte in the school production of Charlotte's Web, but everyone knows that a boy can't play a girl's part. George, however, knows that she isn't a boy, and a transgender child is too controversial for some. It was, in my opinion, an incredibly sweet book and a great choice for any parents who might want to start their own controversial-books book discussion group, or who just want to share a good book with their child.

~Sarah, Adult Services


*Americus by M.K. Reed is a graphic novel aimed at teen readers that explores the impacts of a book challenge over a fictional series that features witches and magic, and it is also worth checking out.

#ComicsWednesday: Atomic Blonde: The Coldest City by Antony Johnston & Sam Hart

I really enjoyed Mad Max: Fury Road (a.k.a. the car chase movie with interesting female characters), so when I saw previews for Atomic Blonde, another action film starring Charlize Theron, I was excited. So before I saw the movie, I checked out the comic it was based on, The Coldest City (the library's copy is retitled Atomic Blonde: The Coldest City to tie in with the film release), and I can tell you that the comic and the movie are meant for different audiences.


The Coldest City was written by Antony Johnston and illustrated by Sam Hart. Hart's striking black and white artwork with its focus on the characters set the story's emotional tone for me as a reader. I admire Hart's use of shadows to convey the way that secrets were hidden and revealed. The plot was an unremarkable spy story with twists and double crosses I didn't find all that surprising, though the story's setting in Berlin just before the wall came down marking the beginning of the end of the Cold War was interesting.

The plot follows a hunt for a list of the true identity of all spies active in Europe (more or less a MacGuffin) and features a female character in a sea of men who underestimate her. Regardless of the book's historical setting, I expect more from a book written in 2012 than I do one written in 1989, and found this choice exhausting.

The film adaption largely removes the importance of sexism to the plot, and swaps two speaking roles from men to women. However, when you add in the film's increased emphasis on graphically violent action sequences, this change is problematic at best (spoilers). The filmmakers also place a great deal of care into the soundtrack and some strikingly colorful visuals, creating a very different tone from the comic.

The movie was okay, but I prefer action movies with an emphasis on fun over gritty (the above gif was maybe the only funny part). What I really appreciated about the film was the way it made me reexamine my experience of the comic. At first read, The Coldest City seemed bland and predictable, but the movie helped me to appreciate its comparative subtlety and how the use of an unreliable narrator creates space for ambiguity.

~Sarah, Adult Services

#ComicsWednesday: Earth Before Us: Dinosaur Empire! by Abby Howard

Abby Howard has been one of my favorite web-comic artists for a long time. I discovered her on tumblr where she publishes short autobiographical comics. (Warning: some of her autobiographical comics are definitely for mature audiences.) From there I fell in love with her ongoing web comic Junior Scientist Power Hour. When I saw that she was releasing a science comic about dinosaurs for kids, I was psyched!

Earth Before Us: Dinosaur Empire! is delightful. Howard frames the information with a narrative about Ronnie, a little girl who flunked her dinosaur quiz at school. Ronnie needs to learn everything about dinosaurs so she can get 100% when she retakes the quiz - TOMORROW MORNING?! Luckily for Ronnie, her weird neighbor Ms. Lernin (recognizable to Howard's fans as herself) used to be a paleontologist. They travel back in time in Ms. Lernin's magical recycling bin through the power of SCIENCE MAGIC to learn everything there is to know about dinosaurs and other prehistoric life.

This is very much in the vein of the Magic School Bus, but Howard's humor is dry in a way that older kids and parents will appreciate. Fans of dinosaurs, funny comics, and learning will love this graphic novel. You can find it in the kids graphic novel section here at the library.

- Libby, Youth Services

Staff Review: The Hour of Land by Terry Tempest Williams

The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks by Terry Tempest Williams stands a very good chance of being my 2017 best book of the year. I loved it so much I'm about to read it all over again. The book combines all my favorite genres: history, nature writing, memoir, travel. Published in 2016 to coincide with the National Park Service's centennial celebrations, The Hour of Land is a very personal tour, conducted by Williams herself, through a dozen of the nation's 58 national parks.

And what a tour guide she is. A naturalist, writer, and native of Utah, Williams is probably best known for her 1992 memoir Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place about losing her mother to cancer just as the Great Salt Lake floods, threatening the migratory birds Williams treasures. She's extremely knowledgeable, she loves wild places with a passion, and she possesses what I can only call a beautiful spirit: generous, gentle, peace-loving, compassionate. Plus, she's a terrific and highly poetic writer.

It's a pleasure to tour the country in her company, even when she's surveying wrenching scenes like the damage inflicted on Gulf Islands National Seashore by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 or the encroachments of the Bakken oil fields on Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. More often what she surveys is sublime, from Alaska's Gates of the Arctic and Wyoming's Grand Teton to Acadia National Park in Maine. She even makes a stop at Effigy Mounds National Monument here in Iowa.

Particularly pleasurable is the variety of approaches Williams takes to her park descriptions, focusing closely at times on ecology or American history, then shifting her lens to her own life and family. She includes letters, emails, and journal entries to fine effect and provides a wonderful personal anecdote about Lady Bird Johnson. Modern readers, who may be unaware of how our great park system got started, learn about the unflagging philanthropic and environmental efforts of such National Park greats as Laurence Rockefeller, Theodore Roosevelt, Stewart Udall, and many others. This book's a lavish banquet of luscious park detail and I, for one, could not get enough of it. How I wish Williams had visited all 58.

~Ann, Adult Services

#ComicsWednesday: Strong Female Protagonist by Brennan Lee Mulligan & Molly Ostertag

Sometimes it pays to take a chance on a book based entirely on the cover art or a clever title. Jumping into a story blindly with no real expectations can be a great way to break a reading slump by taking all the pressure off of yourself. Plus, there's a chance you'll discover a really great book you probably wouldn't've encountered otherwise.

I knew nothing about Strong Female Protagonist by writer Brennan Lee Mulligan and artist Molly Ostertag before I checked it out from the library, and I am so glad that I did. Like many of my favorite comics, it started life as a webcomic, and if you don't want to wait for the library's print copy, you can read it immediately on their website.

Strong Female Protagonist is a superhero story about a young woman who doesn't want to be a superhero but who finds it equally hard to stand silent in the face of injustice. When young teens started developing superpowers, Alison Green discovered she had some incredible powers. The government provided guidance, support, and merchandising opportunities, and Alison became Mega Girl. Until the day she discovered that maybe the world isn't cut into clear divisions of good & evil, and maybe the world shouldn't be turning to teenagers for saving. So Alison took off the mask and enrolled in college, but her life will never be normal.

This is a character-driven and thoughtful take on the superhero story that incorporates real world challenges and issues between the superpowered battles. There's an intriguing conspiracy that propels the plot, but the real focus is on Alison's struggles to adjust to adulthood. The art is less typical superhero comic, and has more of the feel of a cartoon, but with some incredibly detailed backgrounds. One of my favorite parts of reading a long running webcomic is watching the way that an artist's style changes over time. Not that you'll notice any sudden shifts (except for the addition of color in the most recent chapters), Ostertag's art is remarkably consistent.

~Sarah, Adult Services

Staff Review: When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon

The recent explosion of diversity in YA books has given me heart. When I saw a contemporary romance featuring first-generation Indian-American kids, I knew I had to read it. I feel like I say that about lots of books, but I do read lots of books. If you're looking for something to satisfy that rom-com sweet tooth, look no further than When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon.

All Dimple wants in life is to go to school, code an app, and get her parents to see her for the independent American girl that she is. All Rishi wants in life is to do right by his parents, even if that means he goes to school for computer science and has an arranged marriage. Their parents didn't intend to tell them about this arrangement until they were older, but since Dimple and Rishi are headed to the same summer program, they might as well meet, right?

A true comedy of errors and romance, When Dimple Met Rishi is one of the best books I read this past summer. It was well-written, funny, diverse, and surprisingly realistic. Menon grew up in India and now lives in Colorado. She has captured the voice of a generation in this novel - first generation Indian-American kids who struggle between their identity as a normal American kid and as the traditional Indian kid their parents expect them to be. I can't wait for Menon's next YA novel, From Twinkle, With Love, out in 2018.

You can check out When Dimple Met Rishi through the library's OverDrive as an eBook or audiobook. I highly recommend that you do.

- Libby, Youth Services