Required Reading: 10 Books That Changed Librarian Martha Hickson’s Life

In Kim A. Snyder’s film, New Jersey librarian Martha Hickson emerges as a central figure seeking to protect children’s right to read amid growing conservative repression—and in celebration of The Librarians’s release this week, Hickson has shared with Vogue 10 of the books that have indelibly shaped her life. They range from nostalgic childhood favorites to beloved memoirs and an incisive look at how librarians like her came under fire just for doing their jobs. See them all below.

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

Louise Fitzhugh’s 1964 story about 11-year-old New Yorker Harriet Welsch is the book I read again and again as a young girl. Smart, funny, and fiercely independent, Harriet confidently marched to her own drummer, giving me a fictional friend to admire. Over the years, book banners felt differently, attempting to restrict Harriet because they claimed the book teaches children to lie, talk back, and curse. Labeling a character like Harriet as “inappropriate” tells young readers that they are inappropriate, too. Instead, I listened to Harriet’s nanny, Ole Golly, who advised, “There are as many ways to live in this world as there are people in this world, and each one deserves a closer look.”

My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff

I first read J.D. Salinger’s frequently banned The Catcher in the Rye as a 7th grader. Holden Caulfield’s voice hooked me, and I spent my adolescence becoming a J.D. Salinger completist. Joanna Rakoff’s memoir about the year in her early twenties when she worked in the literary agency that represented Salinger offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the publishing world that he kept at arm’s length. Responsible for shielding Salinger from his incessant fan mail – gatekeeping that silenced readers in its own ironic form of censorship – Rakoff grows to love both the reclusive writer and his wounded correspondents. Her memoir captures that time of life, with one foot leaving adolescence and the other flailing for solid purchase in adulthood, when we begin trying on identities and careers. I loved this book and its forgiving look back at the challenge of finding one’s way.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

All the Light We Cannot See

As a librarian, I’m often asked, “What’s your favorite book?” For years I struggled to answer. There were just too many. Then came Anthony Doerr’s 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning historical fiction about a French girl and a German boy caught in the violence of World War II Europe. As the novel unfolds, their separate stories converge in a dramatic struggle for survival. Compelling characters drive an intricate plot across war-torn settings to deliver a powerful message: “Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.” All the Light We Cannot See reminds us that, in a world where information is controlled, accessing ideas becomes an act of courage. I envy everyone who gets to read this book for the first time.

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

In this memoir presented in comic-book form, Alison Bechdel repeatedly examines the question: What if? What if her father hadn’t been killed? What if he hadn’t had illicit affairs? What if he had been able to be open with his homosexuality? Raised in a small Pennsylvania town, Bechdel endured a strained relationship with her distant, closeted father, Bruce. When college student Alison writes a letter home revealing that she is a lesbian, her mother tells Alison that Bruce is gay, too, and Alison begins examining the many attempts she made to connect with him. Starting in 2019, I successfully defended Fun Home from being banned in my high school library twice in the space of three years. The book banners called it “porn.” I call it the modern masterpiece that made me an intellectual freedom activist.

The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

The Magnificent Ambersons

Booth Tarkington’s 1919 Pulitzer Prize winner sizzles with stylish writing, memorable characters, and a fast-paced plot that portrays the disintegration of a stagnant family dynasty overrun by the advent of automotive technology. More than 100 years after the book’s publication, its themes endure: class warfare, the lure of technology, the price of progress, and the power of love to both blind and bond. Although criticism of capitalism is a common hot-button for book banners, who have hurled that charge at Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, they have yet to notice this classic. The 1942 film adaptation by Orson Welles, on the other hand, is one of the most famous examples of studio censorship. RKO cut more than 40 minutes of Welles’ footage and grafted on a happy ending, creating a product Welles described as “the fruit of confused and often semi-hysterical committees.”

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

If you see Anne Lamott’s name on a book, read it. She’s a thoughtful and hilarious writer. In Bird by Bird, she reveals her writing strategies and techniques, spending much of the book addressing fear: of being judged, of punishment, of offending, of being “too much.” That’s a form of self-censorship made even more likely these days with book banners poised to strike every library shelf. Rather than surrendering to anxiety, Lamott harnesses her inner critic to hone her craft and serve readers: “When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again.”

Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller

On the surface, Lulu Miller’s category-defying book is a biography of 19th-century taxonomist David Starr Jordan, founding president of Stanford University. But below the surface, there’s so much more, including a murder mystery, a scientific switcheroo, and an ongoing meditation on the meaning of life. Digging deeper is the point. Surrender your certainty; question what you think you know. Late in the book, Miller explains what she calls the “dandelion principle,” a way of seeing nature by recognizing complexity beyond comprehension: “To some people a dandelion might look like a weed, but to others that same plant can be so much more. To an herbalist, it’s a medicine … To a painter, it’s a pigment … To a butterfly, it’s sustenance.” The same complexity is true of the books that a single-minded segment wants banned.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Betty Smith’s 1943 classic had been on my radar since I was a kid and caught glimpses of the 1945 film adaptation on TV’s Million Dollar Movie. I added the book to my mental “must-read” list, where it languished for decades, until 2021 when the pandemic delivered the gift of time. Reading it nearly 80 years after its publication, I was stunned by the book’s continued relevance, telling the story of a young girl’s coming of age at the turn of the 20th century in a Brooklyn tenement neighborhood filled with Irish, Austrian, Italian, and Jewish immigrants. Smith’s frank portrayal of their struggles amid poverty, alcoholism, violence, and unwanted pregnancy placed the book on banned lists repeatedly over the years despite – or maybe because of – its emphasis on education as the pathway toward the American Dream, as Smith writes, “Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words … From that time on, the world was hers for the reading.”

I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had by Tony Danza

I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had

Actor Tony Danza’s memoir of his year teaching 10th grade English at Philadelphia’s Northeast High School is the story of every new teacher who has suffered self-doubt, shed tears, and celebrated small successes. Understanding the importance of representation as he shepherds inner-city teens through the frequently banned classics To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men, Danza emerges as a real softy, perpetually on the brink of tears, either from frustrating classroom gaffes, emotional exchanges with his students, or embarrassing reprimands from administrators. My own tears fell in response to two words: “Our Atticus,” a tribute given by Danza’s students on the last day of school. Teachers, whether veteran or novice, and anyone who would enjoy a peek inside the faculty lounge should accept Danza’s Apology.

They Came for the Schools by Mike Hixenbaugh

They Came for the Schools

To understand how we arrived at this place where American librarians are threatened with arrest simply for doing their jobs, read Mike Hixenbaugh’s frontline reporting about Southlake, Texas. Starting in 2018, Christian Nationalists in this affluent town orchestrated a backlash against diversity, critical race theory, and anything they perceived as “woke” or “leftist.” Southlake’s conservative coup became the playbook for the so-called “parents’ rights” movement that has since spread across the country to politicize school boards with the goal of imposing “traditional” Christian values in classrooms and libraries. Part Salem witch trials, part Civil War, totally terrifying.