I have been working as a children’s librarian for the past seven years. Recently, I have been thinking about how books help children in really hard situations. Books that some people think should not be in the children’s library because they have illustrations of anatomy or talk about hard subjects. I have two examples of why these books are so incredibly essential to a children’s library.

A couple of years ago, I was helping a caregiver find books for a child who was maybe six or seven years old.. The caregiver said she needed to explain private parts to the child. We walked over to some pretty tame books about knowing your body parts. The caregiver got closer to me and whispered, “I’m fostering this child. She has been abused. I need to teach her about consent and safe touch.” My heart fell, but I picked it up off the floor and continued with my job. We found two books about consent and one book about safe touch  that were a good fit for the age of the child. The following day, I looked into good books that spoke about topics for kids of all ages. These books were necessary for this child, and I felt I had failed the child and caregiver by not having the best resources for them. Most people would be amazed by the volume of children and caregivers who come into the children’s library that are in foster care or have had some really bad experiences. The library is a safe place. A non judgmental place where people can find the resources they need to help themselves or others heal from significant wounds. 

More recently, I checked out a heck of a lot of books about puberty, masturbation, and sex for my son. I know that their dad is not comfortable talking to our kids about these subjects. As a female, I feel like I don’t have enough of an understanding to be an authority for my boys, and my older son was starting to have some pretty in depth questions. So, I started researching titles. I chose two that I thought would work. We read some of the parts together, and he read some of the parts privately. Here is the thing, we always came back together to talk about everything we had learned together. 

As a parent, I did my duty- I vetted the books. We talked about the information in the books. I was grateful that I could find these resources at the library. Then, he came back to me a year later with more in depth questions, so I checked out about fifteen books to narrow down to one book. I do not have the financial resources to buy that many books to decide they are not a good fit. It is my job as a parent to look through the books that my children want to read and give permission. It is no one else’s job to parent my children by taking away resources at our public library either through challenges or legislation about what they feel is appropriate for all people who utilize that library.

-R