In the spring of 2024, a North Carolina Girl Scout troop volunteered for a banned book project with a local bookstore. Stacks of censored books had been saved from the shredder in Florida, and the Scouts boxed them up to send them back to Florida students and families that had requested them. Doing so, however, drew the attention of local extremists. The CSE Supportive Schools team talked with four parents, a troop leader, and one of the scouts about the experience and what they learned from it.
This interview has been edited for length and flow. Names have been changed and identifying information removed in order to protect safety and confidentiality.
The Girl Scouts
Irene (Parent): Girl Scouts are about doing good in your community, taking care of your fellow girls, and positivity. The point of Girl Scouts is to empower girls and to bring them up with confidence. Grade-wise, our troop is first grade through seventh, young elementary school through middle school. We don’t have any high schoolers yet, but we’re really hoping that they can stick together and provide the girls a positive moment to be a girl, through what are some really tough years.
Kathleen (Parent): I have two girls in this troop. Coming out of COVID we were looking for more opportunities for them to be social, but in a safe way. We were meeting virtually for that first year. From the very first meeting–we had gone into a little breakout room and one of the girls was talking about patriarchy… So I think really, from the beginning, there was a vibe of like, this is a place where I feel like these are my people, these are the people that I want my girls to be around. We have three troop leaders. And they are validating human beings, they love the girls for who they are, where they’re at in that moment. Of course, they’re trying to educate them, teach skills and ideas, but they don’t need them to be anyone else other than exactly who they are. And I love that about this troop.
Irene: Even over Zoom the girls were able to become friends, which was really cool, because they had all been so isolated for so long. So then, when we finally came together, it was like they already had friends that they had been able to build, even though we were isolated. And I think this group has only become more tightly knit since then. We’ve been able to do more activities, they do a lot of crafts, and more things in the community.
Bridget (Parent): We’ve gone to the local technical college twice to learn from professionals there. They were in the science lab, learning about DNA sequencing. And then they were in the vet tech lab with several cats, and lots of different things. So they’ve really done the whole gamut of experiences and knowledge types, a lot of knowledge intake, but then also a lot of output where they get involved in the community. I think the first volunteer type thing I remember, early, early on, when we were still doing Zoom, the troop leaders had assembled these craft kits. They all made these little toys for animals in shelters, like little cat toys that they could bat around out of like strings and cardboard and different things. They made little bandanas for them to wear so they could have cute adoption pictures. They were doing all this from quarantine. They’re making a difference, they’re doing arts and crafts, entertaining themselves, and making a difference for these animals.
Irene: They also did a project where they had a list of things that they could collect to make bags of supplies for people who are living in shelters, socks and basic supplies that they could organize and package together and share.
The Book Project
Kathleen: Our troop leaders had heard about a local independent bookstore that was holding packing parties for banned books. We have some librarians in the group, too. They pitched it out, what do y’all think about this, and the response was, this is something we’d love to do, the girls were very enthusiastic about it.
Bridget: These are books that were slated for the shredder in Florida, where they’re culling books from public schools and libraries.
Irene: My understanding was, they had already been purchased in Duvall County to go into schools and libraries, so they were brand new books. And then people got cold feet about putting them out into the schools and into libraries because they were afraid that it was going to cause a blowback. The people who had purchased the books, they’re not the ones at fault, it’s the political climate in the area making them fear for themselves, for their schools, fear for their kids. If you look at what’s happening in Florida, that’s a fair fear.
Bridget: I don’t know what the logistics were behind the scenes, but independent bookstores offered to rescue those books, figuring, these are brand new books, we at least have to keep them out of the shredder. Then it’s like, we’ve got all these books stashed. We need to get them back into the communities where they belong – how do we do that? Let’s ship them back. So they’re shipping by request, if families or individuals or small organizations in these counties request these books, so that they can be made accessible to whoever wants to read them, they ship them free of charge, and the books get to the people who were meant to read them.
Irene: Our Girl Scouts showed up to the book packing party, all eager and excited. I don’t think that the bookstore had any idea how driven our force is. The staff said, just box up four books or so, and maybe a sticker. Our girls came together, organized two different tables, and figured out their own system for how they were going to load these books. It was really cool to see the thought that the children were putting into which books they were putting together in each box. They were paying attention to the books.
Betty (Girl Scout, age 11): I felt like I was really helping a lot, even though it’s just packing some books. With some of the books I saw, I was speechless. I was like, “Why? Why are these banned?” There was one, it was a learning-to-read book about a cow. A farm where the cows had got apartments or flowers. I have no idea, like, this doesn’t make sense.
Kathleen: What we heard throughout the evening, both from the children and from the adults, was “This book? Why is this book banned?” There were a number of books there that our kids recognized. It was hard to wrap our heads around why some of them were included. Some of them you can kind of guess, okay, like somebody is having a hard time with this boy wearing pink.
Irene: Or some the girls had heard about and it was obvious, like a book that has two moms.
Kathleen: Right, but some of them, you have no idea what it was. One was written by a Mexican American author; I don’t know what else it could be. Or a book about a Cherokee legend.
Irene: We’re not just talking about chapter books, and we’re not just talking about older elementary level. There are picture books, there were literally board books, which were intended for toddlers. Some of these books, like the only thing that I could find in it was that the main character wasn’t white, that they featured some other ethnicity.
Norma (Troop leader): One of the books was Dim Sum for Everyone. We are like, so now kids knowing that there are different foods around the world in different cultures is dangerous?
Kathleen: Easily the majority, I would say, are in that category, completely innocuous stories that are going to be shredded because they’re about non-white people.
Bridget: It was shocking to see that, in this day and age. I mean, I don’t understand banning books anyway. But like, the display of books that had been banned, was just, why? Why this book?
Kathleen: There were some moments where the girls recognized: I am a person sending this to another person; I am a kid sending this to another kid. They’d write these little notes on the box, sweet little notes because they knew how important it was to get these books, for these other children who they’ve never met, so they added this personal touch.
Bridget: They really owned what they were doing. And, you know, I would want people reading this story to know, the right-wing chatter would have you believe that there are books being pushed on young people that are full of pornography, and sexual innuendo, and just really mature and fringe and inappropriate material. But these are beloved books, these are books that are, like you said, various legends or old tales. They’re books that feature children as the protagonist, and they’re living normal lives. The books that are being selected for the shredder are good books, they’re wholesome books. They’re books that make human beings seen and loved and respected. This is not inappropriate material, it’s not mature subject matter. These are children’s books that need to be read, that need to be in children’s hands.
The Backlash
Kathleen: So at the conclusion of this beautiful evening – it was Pi Day, 3/14, so I brought some little Moon Pies for the girls. We all left feeling, like, the girls have done this really important thing, we’re so proud of our girls, we’re so proud of how they work. The girls are so proud of themselves. When you do an awesome thing, you want to share it out. People are sharing out on Facebook and people are commenting. “Oh, this is awesome. How do I join this troop?” But the next day, one mom got in touch with us with a screenshot of this terrible email that was sent to her by this local right-wing extremist. Asking her questions like “Are you aware that this bookstore promotes anarchy and domestic terrorism? Why do you think it’s appropriate for Girl Scouts to be in a domestic terrorist environment?” I mean, absurd. “Do you have a daughter in Girl Scouts?” And including a picture of her daughter, I mean, it’s very threatening.
Bridget: You don’t want random men finding your little girl on social media.
Kathleen: Everything was not only taken out of context, but just completely misunderstood. The parents all get on this big text chain, what do you think, what are we going to do, we’re taking down pictures, make sure that that guy can’t follow you and can’t see anything, although it’s probably too late. Anyways, we’re all just making sure that we’re safe, you know, doing what we can in our Facebook world and in our lives, make sure that like, whoa, this crazy person is coming after us, batten down the hatches, what can we do to be safe from this maniac, who’s making stuff up and has a picture of one of the children. … He has a YouTube channel and says the kind of incendiary, radical stuff that some people feed off. And then this mom gets another email, from a local pastor, with similar inflammatory questions, like “How do you justify sending this pornographic and inappropriate material to children?”
Irene: It feels creepy to have someone targeting an organization of little girls. Because as parents, it’s our job to protect our children. And in our society, it is incredibly important to protect our girls, because in so many ways, girls are not protected. So to have these men out there, stalking our Facebook pages, making allegations against this group of little girls. It’s just really off putting, I have to feel like, I can’t share this with my family, I can’t share this with my friends, because I have to protect them from somebody that they don’t even know. It makes you feel like you’ve got to watch your back, you’ve got to worry about your own job, or you’ve got to worry about where you are in the community. It feels unsafe, it doesn’t feel fair, that we’ve come to this place where it’s okay to make these attacks on a group of little girls.
Betty: I was angry, he had no right to do any of that. Because like, that’s not his place to say. He shouldn’t get any say in this, because he was not involved, and he shouldn’t get himself involved. Because he doesn’t need to. It’s not his problem. There are some times, like if you’re standing up for someone, you want to get involved. But that’s not what this was. And he shouldn’t lie about what the books were about, making it seem like these were books that aren’t good. He was threatening because he was using a picture of my friend. That’s not okay. I would have been really scared if I was her.
Kathleen: It feels like an invasion of privacy. These are our pictures that we’re sharing out, on our own personal pages, and these are our personal lives. We have freedoms, I believe, in this country, to choose the activities we want to do, choose the activities that our children do, and patronize the bookstores we want to patronize.
Irene: The irony of it all is that these other people are making the choice to parent their own children by banning books, but then they’re coming in and infringing on our free choice to parent our children. We didn’t seek them out, you know. I’m not asking for you to invade my personal space and my Facebook page or make me feel threatened.
Bridget: We’re not sending the books to them, or to families that don’t want them. These books are going to people that want them, that have asked for them. But you know, when people who are that creepy and hateful are so upset by what we’re doing, then we’re doing something right. It just makes me tired. We’re battling a lot of really big things in our society that have gotten worse, or at least more polarized, in the past few years. It’s exciting work, but it’s difficult work, and you expect a little bit of pushback. But when it turns ugly, and it begins to come after you personally, or people that you know and care about, it’s kind of exhausting. But we’re not going to quit.
Bridget: There was a learning opportunity for the Scouts as well. Because of the age that my child is, I’ve been talking with her about some of the social issues that led to some of these books being banned in the first place. I’ve been talking with her about censorship. This brought it home, that this isn’t just a nebulous concept out there. We are doing this work, now, in real time, and there are people now in real time who are upset about it.
Irene: Our kids can feel this political climate, they know about these things, because we’re educating them about the news in the world. And then to see that such a small action on their part caused such a weird explosion, like, “Oh, wow, our parents aren’t kidding. This really is that political climate.”
Kathleen: It’s also an important conversation we have with the girls about media, right? We can’t believe all the things that we hear on the internet or see on the news, we have to be careful that we’re looking at reliable sources. So I think that’s an interesting learning experience for the girls to have: How a really sweet service project that we’re involved in can be so maliciously misconstrued, twisted up intentionally to make up the story that they want to have.
The Girls Who Make History
Betty: I think that the people in Florida don’t have a right to ban the books. The parents, if they don’t want their kids to read that book, okay, that’s their choice. But what about the people who do want their kids to read that book, but it’s banned, so they can’t read it? What happens then? So, I would tell the kids in Florida that they can make decisions, too. The books shouldn’t be banned in the first place. It’s like my mom and my dad tell me, “Quiet women rarely make history.” Like, that goes for women, but not necessarily just for women. It’s for everybody. I think that also really applies to kids who want to have a say in what they read.
Kathleen: We read this book called Ban This Book in fifth grade, in which the protagonist finds out that her favorite book has been banned, so you can’t get it in the library any more. This girl collects all these books that have been banned, as this keeps happening in her school library. She’s gathering all these books up, she starts a banned book library out of her locker, getting these books out to all these kids in this great underground network of readers. We read that, and Betty is like, “I’m doing it.”
Betty: I mean, my friends are like, “Oh, my God, that’s such a great idea.” And so, we tried to collect all the books that were banned in the story, and we put them in a cubby where anybody could read them.
Norma: I hope that our children grew up to think that they can own bookstores and put literature into the hands of people. Like the women in the 60’s who are driving massive buses full of books into poor neighborhoods, you know? These women started bookmobiles. Like, let them try to ban books.
Irene: I grew up in a family that felt very strongly about doing the right thing. My family was actively involved in integrating the schools, and hearing these stories about my parents being against the Vietnam War and all these different times they stood up and said, “This is wrong.” They did it intelligently and thoughtfully. I want my kids to take those stories, but then also see how their own actions and volunteer work and their banned books, it’s all connected. All of us have the power to do something, even if we’re five, or if we’re 55.
Bridget: I don’t want this experience to just be a memory. I want my daughter to have more experiences that make a difference, to make waves if necessary. I want her to take from this and continue learning ways to keep herself safe, ways to communicate well and effectively, and ways to be kind and share with others.
Kathleen: I want them to be able to look back on this experience with such pride. It’s an amazing thing to do. But I also don’t want it to be this isolated experience. You know, I want them to remember this crazy backlash that happened. But part of that too, is what other opportunities are there. We know we need to keep in mind how to proceed in a safe way. But we’re not going to stop. And in fact, we didn’t stop. Some of our girls went back and did more. So not only did we not stop, and we’re having this conversation, but we also continued the acts of change. We continue to show the kids that it is okay to show up, and we’re gonna protect you, because you’re doing the right thing.
Irene: A couple of weeks ago, the same group of girls went camping and I got the honor of going with them and watching their words and their actions towards each other. I think that it really did make them even stronger, and more proud to be a girl, and to be a girl in this Girl Scout troop. It didn’t push them down, it made them come back stronger. The Girl Scout camp was so fascinating to me, because here we are, all women and little girls on acres and acres of land. It was the safest camp I have ever been to, the climate between the children felt safe. And there were children stepping out of their comfort zone and standing up and singing in front of fifty other people; they would not normally do that, but they were empowered by the other women around them.
Kathleen: In the beginning of this conversation, we talked about the things that we do, the crafts and the projects. These girls also sell cookies, and they go camping, and they made a gingerbread house, although it came out kind of horrific. Every year we do these. These are just girls who are just like any other girls their age, we’re just normal families, they’re just normal girls. And we believe–
Betty: That we can make history. Ruby Bridges, she was just a normal girl who wanted to go to school. She’s famous. There are so many other people who were just normal kids and they grew up and they got famous because they did something. We can do something too.
