On Tyranny: ‘You’re Telling My Kids They Can’t Read This Book?’ Author Andrew Laties Rails Against Book Bans
Music journalist Kurt Orzeck has been running a series of interviews called “On Tyranny” and he interviewed me. Thank you Kurt! Here’s the original link, and here’s the interview content itself, reposted below. (Spoiler alert, Kurt called me “Trump’s greatest nemesis”!!)
“The majority of Americans are angry about this idiocy. There will come a tipping point.
The majority will fight back and win.”
-Andrew Laties
Andrew Laties isn’t your typical free-speech advocate. The decorated author co-founded the annual Easton Book Festival in Pennsylvania, The Children’s Bookstore in Chicago, the Chicago Children’s Museum Store and the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art Bookstore in Massachusetts. In some respects, he is Donald Trump’s greatest nemesis: He is omnipresent thanks to the aforementioned institutions he established across the country, he won’t be bullied (as he was in the past), he doesn’t mince words or self-censor but rather speaks from the heart with unfiltered ferocity, he is an outspoken champion of free-speech who refuses to be silenced, and he is prepared to battle the Trump administration’s book bans to the bitter end.
In other words, Laties is one of us. Even if you don’t place censorship and book bans high on your list of priorities, whether you deem the issues to be political or not, he’s fighting for your rights too. His previously detailed his crusade in the book Rebel Bookseller: Why Indie Businesses Represent Everything You Want to Fight For – From Free Speech to Buying Local to Building Communities. Last month, he unveiled his latest work, the very timely You’re Telling My Kids They Can’t Read This Book? Our Hundred-Year Children’s-Literature Revolution and How We’ll Keep Fighting to Support Our Families’ Right to Read.
When Laties reached out to The Bad Penny, it was a no-brainer to invite him to participate in our ongoing series On Tyranny, inspired by the Timothy Snyder handbook of the same name. Here is the exchange in which we thoroughly enjoyed partaking today with Laties, a hero in the sickening, unbelievable and yet very real battle to save democracy for us all, and not just the livelihoods of artists and dissenters, but their right to exist in American society.
What was the first incident of book censorship you encountered?
When I was a kid in the ’60s, I knew about book-banning. I knew Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Ulysses and Howl had all been banned from U.S. publication as obscene, and that their publishers had ultimately won in court, on the basis of literary merit.
I also knew that when a book becomes controversial, its sales – in the long run – can increase. For instance, I don’t think Howl would have become such a widely read poem if it hadn’t been banned and won a famous court battle.
I opened my first bookstore in 1985. The first book I carried that I knew was being banned from school libraries was Heather Has Two Mommies, in 1992. That was when I clearly experienced that “book-banning” – as the phrase is used in America – usually means libraries, not bookstores. Because we’re private companies.
Still – in the here and now – I start my new book by [discussing] about a nearby bookstore that closed one of their branches, due to complaints from parents that led the school district to cancel all book fairs with the store. So, that location stopped being financially viable. Those parents had a list of books they wanted the store to stop selling, and the company refused; instead, they closed down that neighborhood location entirely.
So, that’s an economic way private bookstores can suffer from book-banning.
Regarding authoritarianism in America: I agree that our democracy is in trouble, but I do think it’s been a lot worse, in the past. Before the Civil War, this country had slavery. That was certainly a maximally authoritarian system, for millions of people. And women couldn’t vote until 1919; they were being denied full citizenship.
The question today is, can our current reactionary government reverse a century of reforms? I think they’d love to take the vote away from women. They’d probably be thrilled to reinstate slavery. But I don’t think the population will let them. We will fight back.
Why is the censorship of books so important to you?
I was bullied as a kid, and I didn’t like it! I love to read; I don’t think anyone should bully someone else by telling them what they can’t read.
It’s so amazing that people who censor books usually haven’t read the books they’re banning!
How are you deciding to fight back against this new campaign of book censorship?
I founded Easton Book Festival, and in my new book I teach how you can start a community book festival yourself. Book festivals are hard for censors to control. Lots of book festivals have started up in the past few decades; we still need a thousand more book festivals, coast to coast. We can overwhelm the censors by generating excitement about reading.
What book(s) were you most surprised to see targeted by the right wing and summarily removed from shelves?
The Diary of Anne Frank being banned is so nuts, because our current government has made so much noise about how they are fighting antisemitism; remember, fighting antisemitism is the government’s excuse for attacking universities, who they claim were antisemitic in not quashing the 2023 student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. And now these same people are banning Anne Frank, the most famous book about the Holocaust! So, they’re doing an antisemitic book ban. They’re such bald-faced hypocrites.
How bad do you think this situation will get?
The Supreme Court’s June 2025 Mahmoud v. Taylor decision means a single parent can throw a school into turmoil by complaining about one book. So now, tons of schools will preemptively remove huge numbers of books, just to avoid getting entangled in a court fight.
This year is going to be a mess for schools.
How bad will it get? Hopefully the majority of parents and teachers and librarians will fight back.
Maybe they’ll have to start running informal lessons outside school buildings.
Could these censorship efforts spell the end of libraries and bookstores for good?
Not the end, not coast to coast – because it’s mostly a red-state issue, and mostly about public institutions like schools and libraries, not bookstores. But in red states, libraries and bookstores are ground zero for this fight.
What gives you hope for the future?
The majority of Americans are angry about this idiocy. There will come a tipping point. The majority will fight back and win.
Buy Andrew Laties‘ book You’re Telling My Kids They Can’t Read This Book? here and visit his website for more information
