“And the Winner Is…”

How Librarians Decide What We Should Read

In one of my previous articles, I told the story of how my request for Michael Knowles’ Amazon #1 bestseller Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds was denied by my local public library.   While I had used this anecdote as an example of the double standard that libraries use when referring to “banned” books, I am bringing it up again here to highlight the dysfunctional process by which books are selected by librarians.  Speechless is about the weaponization of political correctness and is written by a well-known conservative writer, so it was not surprising that my request was denied. In fact, I had used this request as a test, and my public library acted as I predicted it would.  While the library justified its denial by claiming that there were no positive reviews of this book, I was easily able to find a lot of complimentary feedback online about this title, and the fact that it was the number one book on Amazon for a substantial period of time also attested to its worthiness to be added to my library’s collection. 

Librarians, however, look for reviews in a small number of “professional” publications like Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and ALA’s own Booklist, and all of these sources, as you would expect, inordinately promote woke material and overlook worthy but conservatively themed items.  Additionally, librarians are motivated to buy material that has won annual book awards, many given by the ALA.  Unfortunately, most awards in general these days, from the Oscars on down, are not based on merit but on how well nominees align with an organization’s political agenda. 

When librarians decide which books they will purchase for their collections using taxpayer dollars, you’d think that they would consider which books their users actually want or need to read. Sadly, this is not what happens in most publicly funded libraries.  Instead, these librarians are influenced by woke review sources and annual book awards to buy those books which they, along with the organizations they look to for guidance, think their patrons should read.

When I recently visited the home page of Kirkus Reviews, a popular source among collection development librarians, the featured story was a glowing review of the newly released film Origins.  This documentary is based on the book Caste: The Origin of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson, a book which Kirkus describes as “a sweeping survey of how ingrained systems of social categorization. . . have led to horrific crimes and injustices throughout history . . . and how such systems have been used to oppress a wide range of people.”  The woke point of view conveyed by this review is echoed throughout the publication and is also reflected by the books that are awarded the annual Kirkus Prize.  The 2023 fiction winner was The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, a novel which portrays the “solidarity” of Jews and Blacks against “the many local White Christians” who “frown upon the easygoing relationship between” these two groups.   The non-fiction prize went to Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino,” which Kirkus described as a “powerful look at what it means to be a member of a community that, though large, remains marginalized.” Finally, the “young readers” award was given to American Redux: Visual Stories from Our Dynamic History in which the historical “contributions of women, people of color, individuals with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ people are featured prominently.”  Kirkus Reviews also offers a “curation service” featuring “diversity collections” which was “developed to help librarians find diverse books that meet modern standards of sensitivity and respect.”  Books highlighted here include Metaracism: How Systemic Racism Devastates Black Lives and The Pink Line: Journeys across the World’s Queer Frontiers.  My purpose in pointing out all of these specific books is not to object to their being published and read because that would violate the tenets of free speech; what we must take issue with is the clear promotion and celebration of books that convey racial and sexual themes while practically ignoring any other type of book. 

This obvious promotion is also seen in Library Journal, another influential book review source for collection development librarians. Among the books it celebrates in its “Best of 2023” list is Lucky Red in which author Claudia Cravens “skillfully blends Western tropes…into her queer coming-of-age story” set in “the town’s woman-run brothel.”  Of the ten “best” books recommended in the “Romance” category, two are described as “gay romances” while the lesbian romance Mrs. Nash’s Ashes features the “delightfully quirky grumpy/sunshine romance” between the titular female character and a woman named Elsie.  Chef’s Choice is “a charming queer romance” featuring two transgender characters, one identifying as a woman and another as a man.   With such a large percentage of recommended books on LJ’s “Best of 2023” list featuring LGBT characters, it is hard to deny the clear over-representation of such books in this particular sample.

The American Library Association has its own review publication called Booklist.  Its October 2023 issue featured the article “Essentials: Here Be Drag Queens,” which provides a “celebration of modern drag” by recommended fourteen titles including the picture books Auntie Uncle: Drag Queen Hero and If You’re a Drag Queen and You Know It.  For older children, Booklist recommends Martin Mclean: Middle School Queen, which tells the story of a boy who wants to compete in an all-ages drag contest. In Kings, Queens and In-Betweens, recommended for high school students, “17-year-old lesbian Nima, just rejected by her longtime crush and best friend, stumbles into a drag show at a local fair” where “she finds a fascinating and accepting community, as well new confidence and a potential new romance.” 

In addition to the reviews provided by Booklist to promote its woke agenda, the ALA also gives out a number of awards that celebrate books which reinforce this agenda and strongly influence purchasing decisions.  One of this organization’s most coveted accolades is the Stonewall Book Award for “LGBTQIA+” literature, which is sponsored by the Rainbow Roundtable.  In addition to the awards given for adult fiction and non-fiction, prizes have also been given for “young adult” books and even children’s books for over a decade. In fact, in 2021, a board book, We Are Little Feminists Families was given Stonewall’s Mike Morgan and Larry Romans Children’s & Young Adult Literature Award. Last year, this award was given to “Love, Violet,” a book which suggests that an innocent friendship between two girls is homosexual, and also to When the Angels Left the Old Country, a “young adult” novel in which, according to Kirkus Reviews, “Queerness and gender fluidity thread through both the human and supernatural characters.”

As I pointed out in my previous article about the misnamed category of “young adult” literature, When the Angels Left the Old Country was also a runner-up for the Printz Award given to a book that the ALA believes “exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature.”  The other four books that the ALA considered “excellent” were:

• All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir, the overall winner, which Kirkus Reviews praised for confronting “head on the complicated realities of life in a world that is not designed for the oppressed to thrive in."

• Scout’s Honor, by Lily Anderson, in which “the cast displays an effervescent mix of racial and ethnic identities” (from Kirkus Reviews)

• Icebreaker, featuring a gay romance between two hockey players, and

• Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality, a book that “offers nature-based analogs for many types of human sexual orientation and gender identity” according to a BookPage review. 

With the Printz Award winner and its four runners up all having racial and sexual themes, there is no denying the inordinate attention given to books focused on gender or race suggesting that these are the only themes worthy of merit in our society.

The American Library Association has not cornered the market on book awards.  The National Book Awards are presented each year by the National Book Foundation.  This year’s fiction winner was Blackouts by Juston Torres, which addresses “the distortions and erasures of queer history” (NPR), Three of the four honorable mention winners are on racial themes including:

• Chain Gang All-Stars: “a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system’s unholy alli­ance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration,”

• Temple Folk: “The ten stories in this collection contribute to the bounty of diverse narratives about Black life,” and

• This Other Eden: “an enduring testament to the struggle to preserve human dignity in the face of intolerance and injustice.”

As I have already mentioned, my purpose in writing this article has not been to bash individual books.  I have simply tried to provide anecdotal evidence to expose the woke agenda of most book review sources and award programs, an agenda that would likely be supported, if I had the time, by a more objective statistical analysis.  What concerns me is the clear promotion of these books which dominate every review source and are inordinately given awards, drowning out books on a multitude of other topics.  As a result, the impressionable and predominantly left-leaning staff members of most publicly funded libraries end up purchasing a disproportionate number of these titles, and these books often just sit on the shelves rarely getting checked out because patrons are simply not interested in reading them, nor should they feel that they should read them. Meanwhile, review sources and awards are often cited as justification for their purchase in town and school district budget reports.  Those who are hired to run our publicly funded libraries need to realize that the real justification for buying any book in a public or school library is how well it serves the needs of its users, not how well it reflects a woke organization’s questionable agenda, nor what awards it has been given by these organizations or what their glowing reviews have to say.