One of my best memories as a child: being dropped off at the public library in my small Connecticut town, population less than 8,000, while my mom did errands. I am not sure if that seeded my love of reading — to pick whatever I wanted, to skip down the stairs with an eye-level stack in my arms — or the times when I was given free-range in a bookstore, dropped off alone (older, teen, hopefully) in the Yale Co-op bookstore in New Haven, full use of the blue and white striped charge card, unsupervised and allowed to purchase whatever I wanted to read.

You will not be surprised that on one spree I came home with “Forever Amber” my first bodice ripper read under the covers with a flashlight several nights running, my racy introduction to seduction, idiot men and lace. That trip also yielded a book on birds, a mystery series and Black Beauty. I credit choosing the worlds inside all those pages to my relentless pursuit of information. When you are raised to believe reading any book of any genre and size is normal, the brain is fed, watered and grown. Reading makes us smart.

Thanks, Mom.

Yet. Here we are in 2025. To date PEN has documented nearly 16,000 banned books in America.

My children are introducing their children to books now. It is incredibly important to me that access, imagination, and being normal is still part of their vocabulary regarding reading, the difference today that I will accompany them on their book buying and borrowing forays (I hear sighs of relief). I dream of buying or acquiring every banned book and making a library for them. Hold that thought while I go check my finances.

You cannot tell me the news the starving the bombing the hating the raking over of human life in the world, splashed on social media, headlines and TV, is better than reading Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, one of the most compassionate stories of fiction in print. Or I mean THE GIVER? That little apple tree, that tiny child, the huge lesson about sacrifice? Both books on the list.

I have sent a bookcase to my son (apologies, assembly needed) for his six-month-old baby. I want this little boy to see the books — the color, the potential — feel the excitement of a new story when he looks across the room. Nothing subtle about me.

Stop at every big public library and little free library you come across. Books freely given, freely loved. A small, mighty revolution as funding is being slashed for our hardworking public spaces. Bring the words, the vocabulary, the perspective, the language to every corner of the world. This child/mother/Mimi forever believes information is power. Come check out my library any time. You can lock the doors but you cannot lock minds on my watch.

What favorite book do you have on your shelf?

Read on.