Broken Community

On book bans and bullies

I have a really lovely advent essay in my drafts folder, and the plan was to complete and post it today. And then some local drama unfolded, and I find myself incapable of staying silent for a variety of reasons—not the least of which is: this particular drama is in my wheelhouse. We’re talking about book bans, my local library, and community volunteers, three things I care very deeply about.

I’m not a journalist and have never claimed to be. I’m a novelist and avid book lover who likes to write personal reflections and opinion essays in my spare time. To the best of my ability, I have researched this story by reading every online account I could get my hands on and speaking with several people who had firsthand knowledge of what transpired. Any errors are my own and I humbly accept any fault or misrepresentation and will post corrections if needed. Much of what unfolded is documented on a Facebook page and website called The Iowa Standard. I won’t link here because it’s filled with rage bait and questionable “reporting,” but you are free to look it up and see for yourself.

Here’s the story as I know it. A mother took her daughter to our local library where the 13-year-old went into the adult section and checked out the book Icebreaker by Hannah Grace. If you’re unfamiliar with the title, it’s a sports-themed romance that came out in 2022 and skyrocketed to fame—it spent a whopping 44 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. It’s also really spicy. A quick Google search assures me that: “Icebreaker by Hannah Grace is generally not considered appropriate for a 13-year-old due to its explicit sexual content, strong language, and mature themes.” On Hannah Grace’s own website, the book is listed as 18+ and contains a bevy of content warnings including everything from “disordered eating” to “sexual content (consensual).”

When the parents of the 13-year-old realized what their daughter had checked out, they reached out to the library board and asked that the book be removed from the shelves. This week, the board voted 8-1 to keep Icebreaker in the adult section and directed the library staff to look into ways to prevent minors from checking out books with adult content.

A good solve, right?

Well, not quite. That’s the bare bones.

The grit and gristle of it all is playing out in the margins…

A mother in our community posted: “Distribution of pornography to children is a crime, yet our disgraced Sioux Center Public Library is using taxpayer dollars to continue openly disseminating obscene and pornographic materials to minors, while hiding behind a cowardly shield of passing blame on parents for not protecting them, when it’s these sick library board members who should be registering as sex offenders for knowingly and willfully grooming children with sexually explicit pornography.” (emphasis mine)

Nearly all of the republican candidates for governor issued statements about the ruling. Here’s an excerpt from Randy Feenstra: “As a father of four and a Christian, protecting our kids from radical ideologies and age-inappropriate content will be a top priority for me as Governor. It’s why I’ve also voted to ban men from playing in women’s sports, using women’s locker rooms, or using women’s bathrooms. As Governor, I will work to keep age-inappropriate and sexually explicit books out of the hands of our kids and promote faith and family values.”

And although most of the posts about this particular issue are ratioed (meaning the original poster is not receiving the feedback he hoped for—it’s wildly in favor of the library board), there are still many comments like:

“8 to 1 tells us where we are morally in this country.”

“The people need to go to their city council and county supervisors and demand that they withdrawal [sic] financial support from the library until this book gets removed. And the public needs to demand pedophilia charges brought against the librarian and board members for voting to hand children access to pornography.”

“Defund the library if the board can’t stop blindly taking orders from the far-left American Library Association. They’re YOUR tax dollars.”

“Democrats are scumbags. Literally the worst people this country has to offer.”

You don’t need me to recap all the reasons why book banning is unconstitutional and leads to a myriad of negative outcomes. Google it. There are dozens upon dozens of incredible essays and articles that eloquently address the issue from every imaginable angle. But if you take the time to wade through the muck that is this particular conversation online, you’ll quickly see that the antagonist in this story intentionally started a fire and then pumped the bellows to fan the flames of outrage as if his life depended on it. That’s where my ire lies. From day 1, This Stays Here was designed to be: A Substack about community for people who want to be better neighbors. I can’t witness such a blatant and deliberate assassination of community and not speak up. A little handwringing and pearl clutching in matters of presumed morality is to be expected (or at least tolerated), but when you bring a pitchfork and torch to a civil conversation with neighbors, we have a much deeper problem.

Honestly, my heart goes out to the parents whose daughter read something they wish she wouldn’t have. I’m a mom, too. I did everything in my power to protect my five children from anything that would harm them—including explicit material in print, on screen, and online. (Admittedly, with varying degrees of success. Let’s be honest: it’s not IF it’s WHEN.) I don’t think a 13-year-old should read graphic sex scenes, but the jump from pain to blame can be so lightning fast we may wildly miss the target.

It’s simply not the library’s fault she checked out an inappropriate book.

It’s foolishness to blame the library board (a group of volunteers who are not paid or reimbursed in any way for their selfless service on behalf of the community) for upholding the first amendment (I thought we loved the constitution?). It doesn’t make sense to rage at librarians for not vetting every single book that passes through their doors. And:

“We don’t solve problems in America by figuring out who to aim our malice at.”

Skye Jethani

One of the arguments that was made over and over online is that if the film industry can have a rating system, why can’t the book industry? Not an unreasonable idea, unless you consider that recent estimates indicate that there are 500-600 movies released in the US every year, but there are between 700,000 and 1 million books released in the same time period. And that’s just from traditional publishers. Add in self-published books (some of which are stocked on library shelves) and that number expands to almost 4 million. Librarians already organize, research, create and run community programs, assist patrons, stock and restock shelves, promote literacy, manage technology, collect information, create databases, act as stand-in friends and on-the-spot counselors, and (at least in our community) babysit kids whose parents drop them off and leave. Is it also their responsibility to parent those kids?

Perhaps these concerned parents could lobby in congress and push for a rating system for books. Or, if a community decides that it wants a rating system for every book in the library, volunteers can staff a committee that would read and rate each one. I’m sure people will be lining up to attend regular meetings and read stacks of books only to prepare a book report and debate with the group what exactly the rating should be. Oh, but then we’d first have to decide how to define obscene and graphic and violent and age appropriate. And at what age kids can be exposed to those things and at what level. And when it’s actually okay for kids to be exposed to some of those things (as in the case of historical stories about war or a documentary about sex trafficking—which was shown at our local high schools). Not to mention, if our tax dollars allow us to decide what can and cannot be included on library shelves, do the tax dollars of people in the LGBTQ+ community also grant them the power to pick what goes and what stays? What about our tax-paying immigrant and refugee neighbors? Our Muslim, atheist, agnostic, Hindu, and Buddhist neighbors? What happens when the culture shifts and people who think or believe differently from us hold positions of power? Wait a second. I thought we wanted the government to stay out of our business, not micromanage everything. To allow us to decide for ourselves if our children will be vaccinated or not. To stay out of education and church and private institutions. To stop telling us what to do and give us the freedom to make the choices that are best for us and our children instead of legislating everything…

It’s gets messy real fast, doesn’t it? The logic of book banning and “it’s the library’s responsibility, not mine” stretches credulity and puts one in mind of an amateur murder board with red string crisscrossing the cork like a drunken sailor. And at the end of the day, it’s an exercise in futility. Who’s to blame for a 13-year-old getting her hands on inappropriate material? An overworked but well-intentioned librarian who hasn’t read the book and doesn’t know the child or her parents—or their agreed upon standards of what’s acceptable or not? Maybe the girl’s mom should have done a quick Google search to educate herself about Icebreaker. Maybe she should have asked her daughter where she got the book and thumbed through the pages (it wouldn’t have taken much to realize the content was adult-themed). Maybe mom and dad should have had a conversation with their daughter years ago about what to do if she ever encountered inappropriate material online, on screen, or in a book.

Or maybe stuff happens, and no matter how hard we try to insulate our children, we live in a really messy world.

A Common Sense Media Survey in 2023 found that “the average age that kids first reported being exposed to online porn was 12.” That’s a full year younger than our “victim.” Does that make it right? Absolutely not. It breaks my heart. But thrashing about to find a place to pin our anger and frustration does not give us a hall pass to blame someone—anyone!—in an effort to make ourselves feel marginally better about how hard it is to live and parent in our modern context. It’s rough. And parenting is not for the faint of heart.

• The first time I heard about sex, I was playing Barbies with the daughter of my parents’ friends in her basement while the adults played cards upstairs. She acted it out with her dolls for me. We were in elementary school and I remember feeling really uncomfortable and strangely ashamed.

• My husband was shown a Playboy by a classmate in the bushes behind school at recess when he was in 4th grade. The classmate got it from his dad’s secret stash. The boys went to a conservative Christian school.

• We were driving behind a pickup truck with testicles on the hitch when my daughter pointed out “those gross hangy things” and I had to explain male anatomy and why a grown man would feel the need to decorate his truck with genitalia. Her feet didn’t yet touch the floor in our van.

Stop for a moment and ask yourself: did your sex education begin and end with your parents clearly and age-appropriately describing both the act and its emotional, physical, and social implications? And did they continue to follow up with conversations as you got older? Count your lucky stars if it did.

But forget book bans and inappropriate content for just a moment. What pains me more than anything in this whole ugly hullaballoo is the way that people in my small community are treating their neighbors. Your library board members? Big-hearted people who love their community enough to give up their free time to serve YOU. Certainly not pedophiles who groom children. You should be ashamed of yourselves for being anything other than grateful for the work they do. Your local librarians? The sweetest group of other-minded people you will ever meet, who continually seek ways to serve YOU with kindness and respect. They look after your kids when you drop them off, help people fill out job applications online, constantly seek ways to improve and innovate, help our new neighbors with a smile, and throw the doors open wide to their beautiful, public institution where all are welcome (often on a small budget with little thanks). The Sioux Center Public Library is one of the best in the entire state of Iowa, and it is staffed with wonderful people. How dare you call them names? It’s gross, and the people who try to villainize their neighbors for doing their level best are nothing but bullies.

It’s not true that sticks and stones will break our bones but words can never hurt us. Words do hurt. And this manufactured rage hurts our community and seeks to divide. This sort of behavior is exactly what’s wrong with the country right now. The library and board came up with a really great solve: the book remains, but they will work to find a way to come alongside parents. Everyone wins.

Wherever you live, I encourage you to stop by your local library today. Thank the librarians for their service, for the ways that they fill the holes in our communities when no one else can or will. Acknowledge their hard work and the difficult decisions they have to make every single day. Better yet, drop off cookies or a card, shake their hands. Don’t forget to thank the library board members, too. And remember: if you don’t like a book, don’t check it out.

And if you’re concerned about what your kids read, you take responsibility for it.

Thanks for reading. xoxo - Nicole

*Full disclosure: one of my family members serves on the library board.

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