Doyel: Hamilton County library board embarrassing us, making it harder for kids to find books
FISHERS – The book’s here somewhere, stashed where it doesn’t belong, a victim of the culture wars that have spilled into one of our most benign places: the public library.
The library isn’t benign anymore, certainly not in Fishers and Noblesville, where meetings of the Hamilton East Public Library Board run long and get loud. Just last month, armed police officers escorted out a citizen in handcuffs as some in the crowd chanted:
“Shame, shame, shame.”
Like this is “Game of Thrones” or something.
That’s not the book mentioned earlier, the one that’s here somewhere, stashed where … well, you’ve already read that part. Do you want to read the book I’m looking for? You just might, if you’re a teenager and interested in our state’s rich basketball history. The book is written by one of Indiana’s best authors, Phillip Hoose, who grew up in Speedway not long after Crispus Attucks made U.S. history in 1955 by becoming the first all-Black school to win a state basketball championship. That team was led by Oscar Robertson.
Heard of Oscar Robertson? Maybe so – no thanks to some of the pandering, intellectually bankrupt members of the Hamilton East Public Library Board. No thanks to a handful of hysterical parents.
Hoose’s book, “Attucks!: Oscar Robertson and the Basketball Team That Awakened a City,” was published in 2018 to much acclaim. Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, the New York Public Library, the American Library Association – nationally, everyone loved it. More to the point, Indiana loved it.
Even more to the point, Indiana teens loved it. “Attucks!” won a Rosie Award, the kind of thing that should matter to the Hamilton East Public Library Board, seeing how a Rosie is chosen by teen readers – our teens, here in Indiana, who vote for their favorite books. They voted for “Attucks!” in 2020-21. It won a Rosie.
Why didn’t “Attucks!” win a Rosie in 2021-22?
Maybe because it was removed from the teen section in February 2022, a victim of pandering board members and hysterical parents – the kind of people who primly chant “shame, shame” at a citizen objecting to the way we’re starting to ban books, objecting peacefully but loudly until five officers are escorting him out in handcuffs.
This is a story straight out of 2023 Indiana but forgive yourself if you feel confused, because you’re right: It sounds more like something out of China or the Soviet Union or, I don’t know, an earlier version of America, when books were like witches, something to be burned.
Indiana leaders keep embarrassing us
First, make sure you understand what happened here. The book about Crispus Attucks’ state championship wasn’t moved – wasn’t obscured – because of its content. The hysterical parents of Hamilton County aren’t afraid of their children reading about Black kids overcoming racism in 1955. At least, I don’t think they’re afraid of their children reading about that, though let’s be honest:
Would it surprise you?
The book “Attucks!” was a victim of the larger – dumber – war taking place even now at the Hamilton East Public Library, where the librarians are not the problem. Most of the parents, like some of the board members, aren’t the problem either.
Who’s the problem, the children? No silly. The children are the victims of a handful of hysterical parents and pandering board members who decided in February 2022 to shut down the non-fiction area of your local library.
Want to read that sentence again?
Officially, all non-fiction books in the teen section were “relocated” to the general area of the library, a nice and misleading way of saying: The library closed down its non-fiction section for young adults. The teen section still exists, but it’s mostly fiction now, with books like the internationally acclaimed “The Fault in Our Stars” by local author John Green.
Well, pretty sure that book is back in the teen section. It was moved earlier this year to the adult section, not a victim of the general sweep of 2022 that removed “Attucks!” and all non-fiction Young Adult books from the teen section, but targeted specifically.
The HEPL considered a beautiful piece of literature like “The Fault in Our Stars” to be dangerous to young minds. That’s not how the board put it, not exactly, but that’s what it meant.
News: Amid backlash, HamCo library puts John Green's 'The Fault in Our Stars' back in teen section
Let’s be honest about what’s happening here, OK? This is equal parts stupid and scary, as are so many parts of our politics today, where a large swath of this country wants us to embolden an authoritarian regime for the lamest, weakest, most terrifying of reasons: Because the authoritarians happen to be on their side.
Here in Indiana, we’re out front on a lot of this, sadly. We had the Religious Restoration Act of 2015 that cost us state business and international lampoonery. We had U.S. Sen. Mike Braun saying the legality of interracial marriage should be decided by each state.
We have Todd Rokita.
And now we have the Hamilton East Public Library Board, answering to a handful of hysterics and drawing the scorn of an America that understands the difference between freedom and tyranny of religion.
Good luck finding this book here
Kids don’t know much about the Dewey Decimal System. At least I didn’t – and still don’t – and I’ll put my reading habits against anyone’s. Read for hours every night. Library books, I’m saying. Yes, actual books. My wallet has library cards in two Central Indiana counties.
Here's all I know about the adult non-fiction section: Biographies are in the Biography section, and sports are in the 790s. Kids know that sort of thing, too. Want to read about basketball or baseball? Go to the 790s. It’s in there somewhere.
Before a handful of parents in Hamilton County started hovering like hysterical helicopters, before the Hamilton East Public Library Board caved, a Fishers High freshman wanting to read about basketball could go to the teen section of the Hamilton East Public Library, and peruse its modest non-fiction area. There weren’t that many choices, only those of the highest quality. It doesn’t take long to find a book like “Attucks!,” and it was easier still in 2021 when Phillip Hoose’s book was on a special shelf reserved for contest winners.
Now? Go to the adult section, kid. The 790s. Yeah, there are thousands of books in the 790s – on 10 different shelves, all 15 feet long – but hey, the Young Adult books are marked with a faded yellow “YA” sticker on the spine.
No, that sticker isn’t easy to spot. Especially when there are exactly nine titles in the 790s with a “YA” sticker.
I counted.
That’s nine titles out of several thousand. You’d have a better chance with the haystack – at least the needle hiding in there might poke you. A book like “Attucks!” or “Women and Sports” or “Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team”?
Those are three of the nine “YA” titles obscured by thousands of books in the 790s. The other six “YA” titles, on the day I visited? All about gaming. Three on Dungeons & Dragons, one on Minecraft, two others on the general topic.
Good luck, kid, venturing into the adult section and stumbling onto a book about one of the most famous high school basketball teams in our famously passionate high school basketball state. The book was thoroughly reported by Hoose, with sections devoted to the Ku Klux Klan’s influence in Indiana and the uncomfortable truth that the KKK built Crispus Attucks High to keep Black kids away from the white kids.
Doyel in 2020: Truth behind Crispus Attucks, Arthur Trester & IHSAA's top individual award
Hoose, who lives in Maine, didn’t know his book had been caught up in the Hamilton County culture wars until a reader in Indiana let him know his prize-winning Young Adult book was no longer in the section for young adults. We’ve emailed back and forth a few times, Hoose and me. His thoughts:
“There is no profanity in ‘Attucks,’” he writes. “Also no sex, violence or gunplay. Just bruising competition. The book celebrates a hard-earned success that shattered the myth of racial inferiority. It is an easy book to read. Anyone growing up in Indiana – and elsewhere – deserves a chance to know this story. If it is found only in adult stacks, kids won’t notice it.
“I wrote ‘Attucks’ for young adult readers. I wanted them to know that people their age impacted a major American city.”
The Hamilton East Public Library Board doesn’t feel its young readers can handle it. Hey, the board could be correct. If there’s one place we know the American youth get corrupted, it’s the public library.
Get a load of these board members
Sanity is coming to the Hamilton East Public Library Board, but sanity moves slowly these days, ensnared by nonsense like the HEPL Board President, Laura Alerding, allowing a handful of hysterics to dictate library policy. Alerding was behind the push to remove “inappropriate” books from the young adult section, but the Noblesville school board replaced her this week with high school English teacher Bill Kenley.
One can only hope Kenley is more rational – more, I don’t know, American – than some other members of the Hamilton East Public Library Board, like Micah Beckwith. Earlier this year it was Beckwith, during an HEPL discussion on a Human Library event coming to Fishers in July, who asked aloud if the Human Library supported prostitution.
Understand, a “human library” event has people posing as actual books. Adult readers peruse the “books,” check one out, and hear what the “book” has to say on its topic. Yes, the July 15 Human Library at Fishers featured “books” about people who had experienced sex work against their will.
No, Micah, that’s not “endorsing prostitution.”
But that’s how these people operate. They throw out vicious sound bites, hoping their audience isn’t sophisticated enough to separate fact from fiction, hoping their audience’s takeaway will be the vague sense that those weirdos at the library are endorsing prostitution.
Another HEPL board member in the Alerding-Beckwith voting bloc, Ray Maddalone, complained during one board meeting – it’s in the minutes, see for yourself – that the reorganization of the teen section, with each of its thousands of books needing review for “inappropriate” material, wasn’t happening quickly enough.
Library staff and even extra reviewers hired for the project were going as quickly as they could, Library Director Edra Waterman told Maddalone.
Maddalone’s response: Offer $5 for each book a library staffer reviews when they're not busy.
Library workers tend to be busy with work when they’re at work, Waterman more or less responded.
The move to review all books in the teen section and remove offensive titles like “The Fault in our Stars” continues at its pace, embarrassing our state one headline at a time. Meanwhile, a story that could inspire anyone, perhaps even kids in Hamilton County, is stashed somewhere in the adult 790 section, to be found only by young readers willing to leave the area of the library designed specifically for them – young book hunters with time, patience and X-ray vision.
The book is called “Attucks!: Oscar Robertson and the Basketball Team That Awakened a City.” It’s on the shelf now in Fishers, perhaps because nobody in its intended teen audience can find it in the adult section.
Meanwhile, a city sleeps while a handful of hysterics try to restore an America from the 17th century, when Puritans ran things with words that sounded an awful lot like this:
Shame, shame, shame.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Hamilton County library board hurting young readers, not helping them
