In this excerpt from “That Librarian,” Amanda Jones offers a blueprint to battle book censorship in public libraries.
“She’s a sparrow when she’s broken / But she’s an eagle when she flies”—Dolly Parton, “Eagle When She Flies”
Every day for the past 22 years, I’ve left my house and traveled the same route to work. It takes exactly six minutes from the time I leave until the moment I open the door of my SUV to walk inside my school. Every day I walk to the passenger side to get my purse, school bag, and thermos of iced tea to drink at work, and then look at the large cutout of an eagle over the gym on my way into school.
I attended Live Oak schools from elementary through high school, and the eagle has always been our mascot. After I graduated college, I went back to work at the school I attended as a child, once more an eagle. I have been an eagle for 35 of the 45 years that I have been alive, in…