This story was originally reported by Nadra Nittle of The 19th.
Sarah DeMaria still remembers how close she came to resigning from her role as a school librarian.
It was the summer of 2023, and after a year of vicious personal attacks, politically motivated book challenges and police reports to flag so-called pornographic content in the library, DeMaria had enough.
She packed up her office with no plan to return to the Hempfield School District in South Central Pennsylvania. But then she thought about her students: “If I left, who was going to be their voice?” she wondered. “Who was going to protect their books?”
Focusing on the young people she serves keeps DeMaria grounded as libraries, in and out of schools, have become targets of the nation’s culture wars on race, gender and sexuality. During National Library Week, which ends Saturday, librarians across the country are fighting to maintain students’ access to books and to keep their jobs amid cuts to library programs and persistent efforts to restrict reading materials. In the past month, a national book ban bill singling out LGBTQ+ stories has advanced out of committee toward a full vote in the U.S. House. Similar efforts are moving forward in state legislatures.
In this climate, the American Library Association (ALA) this week released its Top 11 Most Challenged Books of 2025, finding that 4,235 unique titles were challenged — the second-highest total. In 2023, 4,240 unique titles were challenged, the most ever recorded. All but three of the Top 11 2025 titles challenged were written by women and nonbinary authors, with Patricia McCormick’s “Sold,” Stephen Chbosky’s “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer: A Memoir” leading the list. Pressure groups and policymakers drove 92 percent of book challenges, up from 72 percent in 2024.
“Libraries exist to make space for every story and every lived experience,” ALA President Sam Helmick said in a statement. “As we celebrate National Library Week, we reaffirm that libraries are places for knowledge, for access, and for all.”
For the librarians like DeMaria whose commitment to inclusion has left them vulnerable, that mission now feels perilous.
After the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered schools nationwide, giving rise to right-wing groups intensely focused on issues including masks, parents’ rights and school curricula, the climate noticeably shifted, DeMaria recalled. She became a Pennsylvania school librarian in 2012. Now, the commonwealth consistently ranks among the top states for book challenges, a distinction unknown to many of her students.
“I always have them guess,” DeMaria said of states with high rates of censorship. “They say, Texas, yep, Florida, yep, and then they guess a bunch of states. And I’m like, ‘No, it’s usually Pennsylvania.’ And that’s shocking to them.”
Aware of growing censorship in Pennsylvania, DeMaria — who is the Hempfield School District’s library media program coordinator and a high school librarian — wanted to get ahead of the trend. In 2022, she approached her curriculum director about reviewing the district’s book challenge policy. Then the school board got involved, leading to a complete, and restrictive, overhaul of the policy.
“It took a pretty quick turn,” DeMaria said, recalling how censorship became a key issue at school board meetings.
The personal attacks began soon after. DeMaria’s critics labeled her a groomer, pedophile and porn pusher because her library included books with LGBTQ+ themes. She learned that parents filed seven police reports about the library books they opposed. The district attorney later determined that the books weren’t actually obscene.
“That can take a toll on you,” DeMaria said. “People said I should lose my job, that I should be arrested, that they didn’t want me near their children.”
The aggression of her detractors surprised DeMaria because she had made opt-out forms available for parents who wanted their children to refrain from reading certain materials, but almost no families used them, she said.
“I received less than 20,” she said. “That paints a very clear picture that it’s really not about the books. It was about politics.”
Instead of resigning in 2023, DeMaria spent the summer regrouping, focusing primarily on serving her students upon her return in the fall. She has turned the pushback she faced into teachable moments. Juniors and seniors at her school take a science-fiction literature class in which they study “Fahrenheit 451,” a 1953 book about censorship and authoritarianism. She has them research novels that have been banned in the United States and shows them the newspaper articles and police reports that chronicle her own personal experiences.
“I tell them about the false narratives,” she said. “I’m transparent about the fact that you’ll know exactly how I feel about censorship — and it’s because in the Library Bill of Rights, it’s my responsibility to fight against it on your behalf.”
When students ask why books with LGBTQ+ themes need to be included in the collection, DeMaria tells them to consider the limited number of movies, books and other media that portray queer people.
LGBTQ+ students “deserve that representation,” she said. “If it sits on the shelf because at that moment I don’t have a student who needs that mirror, that’s where it stays until I do.”
During her 35 years as a school librarian, Bernadette Cooke Kearney has seen major changes — from the rise of the internet in the 1990s to the growing popularity of artificial intelligence today. Through it all, a consistent fear has dogged her: “Every year since 1991, I’ve been afraid I was going to lose my job because of funding,” Kearney said. “The attitude was that this is a frill, just like art and music. Not essential.”
Her worries became reality around 2013, when the School District of Philadelphia cut nearly all of its librarians, including her. But Kearney eventually came back to her magnet school, Julia R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration, after community fundraising efforts and her secondary teaching certification in English paved the way for her return.
Today, just a few fully certified librarians remain in the Philadelphia school district, which includes about 117,000 students. In the 1990s, the district employed over 170 school librarians. “If we want to really have a thinking, thriving society, librarians are irreplaceable,” Kearney said. “It’s not a frill.”
She appreciates, however, that her school district remains staunchly anti-censorship and gender-affirming in a commonwealth that ranks high for censorship. She just wishes the public better understood the contributions of librarians. Some parents have said librarians aren’t essential school personnel, and some of her colleagues have a hazy idea of what librarians do.
“People say, ‘Oh, that’s so nice. You just read stories,’” Kearney said. “It’s like, ‘Yeah, we read stories. But that’s just one little slim part. We’re trying to teach kids how to discern what good information is, what a reliable source is. That’s so important now, with AI and all the junk coming down the pipeline.”
Librarians also advocate for the truth, she said.
“They’re doing more than just stamping books or shushing everybody,” Kearney said. “It has to do with people building good citizenship.”
She connects traditional library skills to the challenges that artificial intelligence poses for students now.
“You do the same thing with AI that you’ve always done with print and websites,” Kearney said. “Where is it coming from? Who’s the author? Is the information credible? You always have to evaluate the source, no matter where it’s coming from.”
Helmick of the ALA considers the attacks on libraries to be more than a culture war alone.
“When we think about the fact that library service is central to community life, we always recognize that difficult conversations could be facilitated here,” Helmick told The 19th. “What’s difficult is that the role of libraries is now being misunderstood by a very vocal minority. We’re being pulled in as a political target.”
Helmick said the push for censorship aligns with efforts to defund libraries entirely.
“This is also a class war,” they said. “Whether people read freely and have access to information is really at risk. We’re in an information age. If we’re not willing to invest in our communities so they can successfully navigate the digital divide and digital citizenry, we will not be equipped to continue to be a nation of, by and for the people.”
Helmick cited the federal “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act” — which has advanced in the House and would limit federal funding for schools that contain what it deems “sexually oriented materials” — as particularly disturbing legislation.
“Lawmakers are writing broad laws that will create a chilling effect in the hopes that people will self-censor in order to not be a victim of the ramifications,” Helmick said. “The broad definition could lead to things like Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’ being taken off the table. Are we a people who teach our children what to think or how to think?”
Despite a sustained years-long effort during the 2020s to restrict reading materials, Helmick finds hope in polls indicating that 70 percent of the public opposes censorship of any kind.
“That’s quite incredible because I joke that 70 percent of Americans wouldn’t agree that water is wet,” they said. “The vast majority are uninterested in this, which makes me wonder why we’re attacking the public information sector in the middle of an information age.”
Fighting against censorship and supporting freedom of expression doesn’t have to be an ordeal. It can be as easy as visiting one’s local library.
“Get a library card,” Helmick said. “Dust off your old one. Go into a library and use it today. Come breathe life into it.”
School librarians aren’t the only ones facing censorship and political attacks in the post-pandemic era. Any librarians who commit to inclusion may find themselves targeted. In rural North Carolina, Tracy Fitzmaurice has endured such targeting at full force. She is one of 10 librarians nationwide to receive a 2026 “I Love My Librarian Award” from the ALA for her public service, particularly her work supporting people with disabilities, digital literacy and workforce development. But a complaint about a library display in June 2021 led to a sustained backlash against her that ended with her resignation in February 2026 after 34 years with the Fontana Regional Library system in Jackson County.
“The bigotry toward the LGBTQ community is at the absolute heart of it,” Fitzmaurice said. “It started as a complaint about a Pride display, which we had been doing for years.”
From there, the situation escalated. People who wanted LGBTQ+ materials out of the library worked to elect candidates with similar views to the county commission. Those commissioners then appointed a new library board, which upended existing policies and moved LGBTQ+ books out of the young adult section and into the adult stacks.
After some community members objected to a local LGBTQ+ group called Sylva Pride — named after Sylva, the county seat of Jackson County — using the library’s meeting rooms and to displays of LGBTQ+ books, the county exited the regional library system.
Fitzmaurice decided it was time to resign out of concern for her health during the prolonged dispute. She has experienced stress and sleeplessness, she said.
“To have someone stand up at a commissioner’s meeting and say that I, on behalf of the ALA, was grooming children for sex trafficking — it’s hard to relate without spending another hour talking,” she told The 19th during an interview.
She warned her fellow librarians not to buckle to outside pressures.
“Don’t do anticipatory compliance,” Fitzmaurice said. “‘If I just move this book, maybe they’ll go away.’ They won’t. These people have been at it for five years. What it really comes down to is local elections.”
Not all librarians have experienced strife and ugliness during years of political division. In Boone, Iowa, Zachary Stier has spent 15 years making the Ericson Public Library a place of connection, literacy and mental health support.
Stier, director of children’s services and an “I Love My Librarian Award” honoree, launched the Activating Community Voices program, which joins stakeholders together to address issues including food insecurity, homelessness and early childhood development. When the U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness an epidemic in 2023, Stier’s group initiated an effort called Project Connection.
“We put out a community survey to get data,” he said. “Based on that data, we’re putting together a presentation for our community and our leaders, and then we’ll work collectively to develop programs that drive community connection.”
Stier also co-created the Little Engines project, a family engagement and early literacy program that uses an app to help families track reading time and complete activity badges. The program equips families with books and technology like mobile hotspots.
“There is still a digital divide,” Stier said of his community, roughly 40 miles north of Des Moines. “It confuses me that we’re struggling with that as a society. Internet access is a basic need.”
Discussing the digital divide is as political as Stier wanted to get, but he acknowledged that libraries have increasingly been politicized, largely because people don’t know what they are all about, he said. More than anything, libraries are a “place for everyone,” he stressed.
“Libraries provide an experience — an experience that allows individuals to learn something new, try something new, build connections and really help elevate our communities,” Stier said. “That’s what it is for me.”