Just down the street from our house is a little free library. If you pay attention, you will see them all around. They have become very popular. People build a small structure that will hold a dozen or so books and keep them safe from the weather. The concept is that anyone can take a book without charge. Users are encouraged to leave books as well as take them. The idea is that books will go into circulation. The libraries provide a place for the exchange of books and encourage reading. It works, but not perfectly.

If you look into the little libraries, which I often do, you will discover that after time they tend to become filled with books that no one wants. I have so rarely found a book that I am interested in reading that I might give up on little free libraries, despite occasionally donating books to them because I don’t expect to find anything worth reading.

However, the little free library in our neighborhood is exceptional. I know why it is usually filled with interesting titles for children and adults. Our son, who is a librarian, who has access to a lot of books through his library’s book sales program, and who is constantly promoting reading and the circulation of books, has adopted that little free library. He and his children check it out on a regular basis when they visit our home. One day not long ago, the children came with a stack of books that they had chosen to place in the library. They removed books that had been uncirculated for a long time and replaced them with their selected titles. Now, every time they visit our home, our grandchildren go to check the library. Only one book from the initial stocking remains and, in the words of our grandson, “It is a good one!” The book that has not been circulated is the first book in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Our son’s theory is that so many people have already read the book and so many copies are already in circulation that no one wants it right now.

Our grandchildren are keeping their eyes out for other good books to bring to that little free library. Our son is paying attention to circulation - to what comes and what goes and which books just sit without circulating. It is a fun pet project. They’ve gotten me interested and involved as well. As we continue to sort through our personal library, shifting which books we want to keep and which we want to pass on to others, we keep out an eye for books that we think will circulate in a little free library. We know where to place them.

We are a family of book lovers. We carry cards for two library systems and usually have books checked out from both at the same time. The front room of our house - the first that guests enter - is filled with bookshelves and books. My favorite chair is right next to the books where I can sit and read. That love for books is evident in our children and grandchildren as well. Our grandchildren love to crawl up into that same chair with a book and we make sure that there are plenty of children’s books available in our home. The three oldest grandchildren all know how much I love reading Go Dog Go! and There’s a Mouse in the House and a host of other titles. They can’t wait until their two-month-old brother is old enough for read aloud - partly because they still enjoy read aloud. The poems of Shel Silverstein are meant to be read aloud. It is far more satisfying than reading them silently.

As a lover of books in a family that loves books, I simply cannot understand the fear that is displayed by those who want to ban books from circulation. It seems that almost every day I read an article about another book that has been removed from school libraries by people who think that banning books is the way to keep people from reading them. Somehow they see ideas in books that threaten them and they go to considerable effort to try to keep others from seeing the books.

Of course banning books doesn’t work. It brings attention to the books and often results in increased circulation. Tell a middle school student not to read a book and you increase the likelihood that the student will read it. So it surprises me when people think that the solution to information they don’t like is to make less information available. Still, I have read enough articles in recent years about school banning books that I know it is a reality.

I was really surprised to read recently, however, to read in the Washington Post that the book Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers, with delightful illustrations by Marla Frazee has been removed from public school libraries in Walton County, Florida. It joins a long list of award-winning books that have been placed on banned lists in Texas, Montana, Louisiana, and other states. The news really makes me want to rush down to our local bookstore and buy a few copies to put in little free libraries around our neighborhood.

It is really hard to figure out what has offended those who sought to have the book banned. The author, Susan Meyers, believes that the reason the book has been banned is that it has been included on several LGBtQ children’s book sites. The book is simply a celebration of babies, described by the Post as a “whimsical, lyrical ode to infancy.” My theory is that those who seek to have books banned are not themselves readers of books. They go through the web sites of groups who have ideas with which they disagree looking for titles those web sites review positively and then seek to have those titles banned.

So I’ll keep looking in little free libraries. I’ll take books from them that interest me and I’ll donate books that I think others might like to read. And don’t be surprised if you happen to be walking through our neighborhood and spot a little free library with a copy of Everywhere Babies or Maus or other books that have been banned. If you haven’t ever read a banned book, you might want to check out one of those copies.