It’s a slow Monday afternoon at Patmos Library in Jamestown Township, one of Michigan’s fastest-growing communities with a population of about 8,900 residents, when Kaitlin McLaughlin sits down to read stories to a group of five kids.
The children count a school of fish on the page, waddle like penguins, tweet-tweet like birds, stand one-legged like flamingos – all in prompt to the books McLaughlin is reading to them.
In sharp contrast to the youth storytime scene, an ongoing debate over certain books that some want yanked from the shelves is putting libraries in Michigan and the rest of the country in the middle of a cultural controversy.
Public libraries have become the latest political battleground, where the constitutional freedoms to read books with a vast array of themes and passages – even those some people disagree with – are being met with parental concern about keeping certain topics away from children.
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So far in 2022, Michigan Library Association Executive Director Deborah Mikula said her association has seen book challenges pop up in West Michigan, Southeast Michigan, the Saginaw Bay Region and the Upper Peninsula and in greater numbers than years prior.
“There have been censorship issues forever. We’re not surprised; It’s not something new,” Mikula said. “It’s just the volume of these attempted efforts and the extremist rhetoric that’s going with them is unprecedented to us. We have never seen this many books challenged, and I think that that’s something that we really have to look at.”
Those challenging the content are objecting to a range of themes – overtly sexual passages, LGBTQ relationships or racial justice – in wanting certain library books removed.
The push to take these books off the shelves are sometimes coming with “extremist rhetoric” not seen before, such as labeling library workers “groomers” and pedophiles. Local and state library leaders are branding the push as acts of censorship.
And while officials say the censorship efforts are happening across Michigan and the rest of the United States, the controversy is playing out intensely in West Michigan, home to two mostly conservative counties with a large religious base, in multiple ways.
The brewing backlash against Patmos Library after officials refused to pull a few of its small collection of LGBTQ books out of circulation came to a head at the polls. In August, voters essentially defunded the library by shooting down a 10-year operating millage renewal and, in the process, put a spotlight on library books being challenged and the potential effects.
The national microscope was thrust onto Jamestown Township in the Republican stronghold of Ottawa County following that vote. In turn, a fundraiser to keep the library doors open brought in donations from around the world, including a $50,000 donation from famed romance novelist Nora Roberts.
McLaughlin, who was recently named interim director of the library, is the third to lead the library within a year’s time.
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Her predecessors resigned amid continued harassment, with some making outlandish claims their practices are “grooming” children to be exploited, Larry Walton, chair of the Patmos Library Board, told MLive/The Grand Rapids Press.
In neighboring Kent County, the library system overseeing 21 branches in the Grand Rapids area so far this year has seen triple the number of formal challenges to remove books from shelves compared to last year.
Last fall, the Byron Township supervisor in southern Kent County publicly pondered why the township was supporting the local library branch and suggested turning it into a shoe store amid a small uproar about a graphic novel accessible to children that featured an LGBTQ hockey player, drinking and swearing.
Lakeland Library Cooperative Director Carol Dawes said the co-op, which has 42 public library members across eight West Michigan counties, this year has been seeing more people coming in “very disgruntled” about books on the shelves.
“This is the only time in my 37-year career – here and in Illinois – that I have ever seen people vote to defund a library over LGBTQ+ materials,” Dawes said. “It is alarming that out of 67,000 titles in this library and 90 LGBT+ titles that they decided that they should defund the library.”
Nationally, the 1,651 book titles being targeted for banning through August this year already is the highest on record in the last 20 years, according to the American Library Association.
Among the American Library Association’s list of top 10 challenged books last year were “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe for LGBTQ content and sexually explicit images; “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas for profanity, violence and an alleged anti-police message and social agenda; and “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson for LGBTQ content, profanity and sexually explicit content.
Library’s funding cut over books
Book challenges and a tax renewal put the issue front and center in West Michigan. Patmos Library is the only library in the state so far to have the anger about certain books materialize into funding cuts at the polls.
A total of 50 library millages were on ballots around the state Aug. 2. Forty-five passed and four failed for apparent “normal” reasons, such as a rejection of further taxation, Mikula said.
Patmos was the only one shot down for reasons regarding library content.
Watching the millage fail, it was “rock bottom,” Walton said. Without the renewal of the 10-year millage, a majority of the library’s annual budget would be gone, leaving its future uncertain.
Then the emotional rollercoaster of that month continued, Walton said, when a fundraising campaign cropped up and saw more than 4,700 people from around the United States and world chip in to save the library.
With roughly $265,000 in hand from the fundraiser, the library can keep its doors open another year. And this fall, some in the community are rallying around another library millage attempt on the Nov. 8 ballot.
Citing national polling, Mikula categorized those who want to censor library books as a vocal minority.
But nearly 43% of eligible voters, or about 3,045 people, turned out Aug. 2 to weigh in on the Patmos Library question, with 62.5% voting against the millage renewal. That turnout was even higher than it was in the August 2020 primary, which, countywide, surpassed at least two decades of primary election turnout records.
One of the driving forces behind the defunding of Patmos Library is a Facebook group called Jamestown Conservatives, according to Walton. The private Facebook group has 200 members.
Lauren Nykamp, an administrator of the group and organizer, declined MLive’s request for an interview for this story. In a brief statement, she pushed back on the group being categorized as against LGBTQ books.
“It is not about LGBTQIA+ books,” Nykamp said in the statement. “It is about sexualizing children. Sexualization of children is always wrong. Always. This isn’t political nor should it be controversial.”
Several of the books targeted at Patmos for removal from the shelves are graphic novels with LGBTQ characters and/or romances. MLive/The Grand Rapids Press has put in a Freedom of Information Act request for all challenges received by Patmos this year.
In fliers handed out at a Memorial Day parade in Jamestown Township, activists implored residents to “HELP PROTECT OUR CHILDREN” and learn what was happening at the library. The fliers warned of LGBTQ content and pornography being peddled by the library, with many of the books designed to appeal to kids.
Sandy Talsma, 74, was leaving the library on a sunny September afternoon with an armload of books. She set a goal to read 75 books by year’s end. Already she’s read more than 100, thanks in part to audiobooks that allow her to multitask and work around the house.
Talsma discovered her love of reading at a young age thanks to her father and a lack of television in the home.
It’s in the nature of a library to have content that people will object to, she said. Even in the books she reads, there are things she doesn’t agree with.
Talsma doesn’t agree with the promotion of LGBTQ content to youth but said everyone is entitled to their own opinion and it’s a poor reason to shutter a library over.
“We have a lot of religious books, and maybe there’s somebody that doesn’t like that, but that’s not a reason to close down the library,” she said. “As a parent, you go in there with your children if you’re concerned about what literature is out there and what you want them to read, what you don’t want them to read.
“I think it would be a pretty sad commentary on our township if we voted it down and ended up without a library.”
McLaughlin said her goal as a librarian is simple: spark a love of reading in kids and help them become lifelong readers.
Just like there are books on lakes, boats and dinosaurs, the library is a space where there’s something for everyone, she said.
“Every member of the community is a valuable member of the community, and our entire collection should reflect that,” McLaughlin said. “I understand that this community holistically is a very conservative community, and I utterly respect that, but we also need to cater to those who have a different walk of life or a different worldview, because we are the last physical place of a neutral space.
“As a library, we should have books on all topics because everyone should be welcome.”
Requests made to remove 13 books from Kent District Library
So far this year people have formally requested 13 titles be removed from shelves at the Kent District Library, which serves several communities across 21 branches in the Grand Rapids area.
The reasons for the requests run the gamut, with the majority being opposed to content with LGBTQ romances, racial activism and displays of sexuality – heterosexual or otherwise, according to data received by MLive/The Grand Rapids Press through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The library system fielded only four formal requests for book removal in 2021, and averaged about two to three each year prior to that, according to Kent District Library officials.
One of the challenged books is “Daddy and Dada,” a children’s book about a young girl with two fathers. According to the publisher’s description, the book is about how families aren’t always alike but that, no matter what they look like, love is the most important part.
The person who wanted the book off the shelf said the book is “homosexual indoctrination” that seeks to “normalize a distorted version of family living.”
“Completely age inappropriate,” the challenger, whose name was redacted, wrote on their objection to the work. “Teaches wrong is right. Celebrates sexual perversion. Teaches a child to accept and embrace a lifestyle of sexual deviance. Unsuitable content that does not belong in a children’s area.”
Another challenger took aim at three children’s books – “Antiracist Baby,” “Little Feminist” and “Love Makes a Family.”
“These books are divisive and morally corrupt,” the challenger wrote. “Teaching kids they are racist and teaching sexuality or gender at 0+ is wrong. These books are on display for any child to grab. That isn’t safe and I want them removed.
“... If the library ‘has’ to have them, at least put them in a section that isn’t so easily accessed. My 2-year-old doesn’t need to see two men in bed together or anyone in bed together!”
Kent District Library Director Lance Werner said none of the challenges have resulted in books being pulled from the shelves. That’s because the bar for removal is high, and for good reason, he said.
“When you express a willingness to pull items off the shelves and your actions are contrary to the constitution and you’re violating civil rights, then where does that end?” Werner said. “When you start censoring things and banning books, what you’re doing is controlling information and controlling access to information.
“The First Amendment guarantees free speech, but it also guarantees people the right to access things freely.”
Werner said it isn’t just one side of the political spectrum that has wanted books off the shelves.
He noted previous challenges around Dr. Seuss books. Early last year, the organization that owns the rights to Dr. Seuss stopped publishing six books due to alleged racist imagery. Kent District Library maintains five of the six titles still in circulation.
One of the books challenged this year, called “Johnny the Walrus,” is a children’s book that a challenger alleges is undermining to the lived experiences of transgender youth and their families.
“A lot of it is driven by sort of pop culture issues of the day,” Werner said. “I’ve heard it time and time again kind of thrown around by candidates talking about this whole issue around book banning, and they might call it parental rights or whatever but at the end of the day it boils down to book banning.”
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