Last week we shipped an exciting box of books to the media center at Tuscola High School in Haywood County!

We initially reached out to the school’s media center after seeing a story about administrators removing Nic Stone's Dear Martin—a novel about police violence—from a 10th grade class. While the American Library Association has reported that book bans are taking place with unprecedented frequency, this news hit us a little different because one of our team members was once a 10th grade student at Tuscola.

When we spoke with the school’s media coordinator, they shared that while the book was removed from Tuscola’s curriculum, it was still available in the library. The ban had resulted in huge student demand for “Dear Martin,” and the library now had an extensive waiting list for its few copies. Encouraged by this update (the kids are alright!) we mailed a half dozen copies of the book to the media center and asked what else they needed. What we learned was that although there are a large number of Latinx students in the Haywood County school system, they have very few books in Spanish.

The photo above shows an armful of titles we selected and donated to the library. These are books that we would have loved to find as 10th graders and they’ll be available to students throughout the Haywood County school library system. Shout out to the awesome librarians who are on the front lines in defense of Black, queer, and immigrant youth! We see you and we love you.