I was a prolific reader as a kid. Homeschooled, single mom who worked, so I would spend sometimes 6 or 7 hours a day at the library while she was at work. Once I went through the entire kids section, the librarian caught me in the adult section and I thought I’d be in trouble. Instead she showed me this collection of fairy tales that were dark and when my mom came to pick me up, she explained I’d been through everything and asked my mom to sign consent for an adult library card. Which she did, because my mom rocks. Lol. Only book she wouldn’t let me read was the color purple when I was 10. Had to wait a bit for that. Lol.

Well, there was this one time that I wanted a book that was in the restricted section, and I didn’t have a teacher’s note allowing me to go in there, so I just took my invisibility cloak one night and snuck in anyway. The librarian suspected nothing.

I went to my local, very-small-southern-Bible-Belt-Town library asking for a copy of Children of Lucifer: The Origins of Modern Religious Satanism, which is a dense, scholarly book (extensively researched!, lots of end notes!, published by the Oxford University Press!), and not even remotely sensationalist. I put in a request for an interlibrary loan, because they didn’t have a copy in the system that my library is part of; I assumed that it would need to come from a university.

Not unexpectedly, I never received a call, email, text, or anything at all following up on my request. I strongly suspect that they “lost” it.

The book is considerably less expensive now; I think the exchange rate is why it was previously so expensive.

My brother was denied shakespear when he was 10 because it was “above his reading level”.

Never. I haven’t seen any snide looks or side eyes, either, and if I can’t find something then the ones I’ve seen (in both red and blue states) have been as helpful as can be, trying to find things in library networks or in other formats (ex: Libby).

No, but I did have to have parental permission to check out The Shining.

Yeah. Some dingus put the book I was wanting back the shelf after it was marked reserved by another person, so I couldn’t take it that day.

Not denied, no. But the librarian wasn’t quite sure what to do when I was checking out The Da Vinci Code at about 11 y/o. At the time I didn’t understand why she looked so surprised/concerned when she asked whether it was for my mom and I said no, but I kind of see her point now. Then again, 11 y/o me loved it.

The fact that few public libraries possess Marxist texts—either because the librarians or boards of directors refuse to stock them or because reactionaries destroy them—is a kind of denial or a shadow book ban.