Watching ‘The Librarians’ as a School Librarian

The Librarians is ostensibly about the troubles I face as a school librarian under attack from politically motivated parents who want to ban whole sets of books from libraries. But my experience with “banned” books is quite different from the librarians who give the movie its title.

The documentary opened in theaters the Friday ahead of Banned Books Week (October 5–11, 2025) having toured festivals earlier this year and collected numerous awards. It focuses on libraries, mainly in Texas and Florida, where preventing children from having access to books about a variety of human experience is just part of a broader political agenda. To quote the film, “Politicians are playing a very dangerous game when they try to make school libraries battlegrounds for their political war, because the only people that it is going to hurt, are our kids.”

As a school librarian for the last 15 years. I count on “banned” books — that is, titles that are challenged by various groups around the country as inappropriate for school libraries — to help me build a balanced collection. Year after year, the books on this list tend to skew toward books with sexual content. Some are fiction such as TJ Klune’s House on the Cerulean Sea, others are nonfiction titles whose goal is answering questions such as the graphic novel: Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human. To be clear, these titles make up only 3% of my collection and are far from the majority of what we offer students.

Providing information and access is central to every library. This is even more essential in disadvantaged communities like mine, where our primarily immigrant and first-generation demographic rely on us to help them navigate unfamiliar resources. Ironically, the books that show up on the annual Banned Books lists most often are on topics about which our students know the least — and the ones they are the most afraid to ask about.

Students and book challengers share a commonality: a lack of understanding about titles with sexual content — especially queer sexual content. Both feel like they shouldn’t be reading, or be seen with a book that is known for being sexual. Though pop culture portrays the queer community as widely accepted, like millions of students around the world, many of our students face a different reality. These kids who slip into my library and try to fade into the furnishings are hiding their true selves from their parents out of fear of rejection or punishment. They are also hiding from their peers for fear of ostracization or worse. To these students, it can feel intimidating to pick up books like Adam Silvera’s They Both Die at the End or George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue whose cover art clearly depicts queer characters, as though opening them might out them. For these students, knowing these books are on the shelves next to volumes like L.J. Smith’s popular Vampire Diaries series and Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men signals the library is a safe space.

One shy freshman discovered the queer books in my library’s collection midway through their first year. They checked one out and, when they returned it, quietly asked if I had more. Soon, they were spending every lunchtime in the library, reading stories with queer characters day after day. After a while, they hit a wall — finding the titles were too explicit for them — but even, despite that self-regulating limitation, their exposure was self-affirming and gave them confidence in themselves. Over the four years I’ve known them, I’ve learned their home life is economically and emotionally unreliable, which made finding a safe space at school all the more crucial to their well-being.

Parents have the right to monitor what their children are exposed to, particularly at schools where they rightly expect their child won’t encounter material of which they disapprove. This is not the argument The Librarians or any librarian is making. To quote one of the librarians in the film from vintage 1983 footage: “The thing that truly concerns us is when an individual, whether it be a parent, or a non-parent, or a single group within society tries to determine what is correct for not only that child, but other children as well. That is what we fight.”

At our school, the challenge is not enough parent involvement. After watching The Librarians, I’m starting to wonder whether that’s a blessing in disguise. The book challengers in the film are white and don’t seem to face the same obstacles in this country as our families. They share deep-rooted faith with many parents in our community, but that’s the only overlap. Our students’ families are focused on getting by day to day. In the unlikely chance their children would come to them for guidance on sensitive issues like gender, sexuality, or race, their knowledge of services and resources is limited. This is partially due to their status as recent residents and their view of school staff as intimidating authority figures.

I realize public schools are a service of the community. But as such, filling information gaps with vetted titles is part of our responsibility. Some of these vetted titles are the ones repeatedly appearing on annual banned books lists. I could leave titles like Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer and Juno Dawson’s This Book Is Gay – which I have vetted and approved as appropriate for our students – off my shelves and direct students to the public library branch three blocks away. The partnership between our district and Los Angeles Public Library automatically issues students a public library card. I’ve helped our teens put books on hold and explained how to pick them up at the branch. But the percentage of students who follow through is tiny.

Much of book banning’s platform in The Librarians is grounded in scripture. As the film says, “What’s dangerous with this book banning is it’s being led by people who say they love God.” Holy books can be powerful tools for pushing rhetoric. Growing up in Iran, I saw firsthand the Islamic Republic take over the country using the Quran. Their first order of business was to destroy countless titles deemed inconsistent with its teachings. What started as censorship devolved into a dictatorial theocracy. This is not to equate the two situations, but to point out what they share: using religion as their authority. Hearing parents in The Librarians scream that God is directly against Jonathan Evison’s Lawn Boy while wielding the Bible which contains rape, incest, and murder is a bizarre contradiction.

As The Librarians notes, case law was established in Board of Education v. Pico (1982), which determined: “A book cannot be removed because of a disagreement with the ideas in the book.” Where there is agreement is in parents’ right to decide what they deem appropriate for their own children. Parents can certainly direct their students not to check out, or even look at certain books. I have a bookworm student who has returned books partially read because their parents didn’t think they were appropriate. This is an obedient student who followed their parents’ rules. If a parent wants extra enforcement that their child does not have access to a book, they can contact me about that directly and I will restrict that student’s access to it. But, in my experience, most students are terrified of their parents discovering anything about their private lives, and so keep that very removed from them. Many parents, meanwhile, are not informed or comfortable enough to be a sounding board for their children’s questions.

Alas, wherever you fall on this issue, The Librarians won’t change your mind. It mirrors the world we live in, where everyone exists in their own echo chamber. As the festival review from Book and Film Globe’s Sharyn Vane points out, though, it does provide “a stellar exploration of what’s driving this most recent wave of censorship and the human toll of advocacy.”

Echo chambers are a disservice to students, restricting their access to life-saving information. Speaking as a high school teacher librarian, my stance is simple: let’s just get students to read about the world around them.