2025

Mural inside Grasse’s Grill in Door County, WI

2025

Our local library is celebrating 150 years.
One and a half centuries. Founded in 1875,
they counted borrowed books with beans
and didn’t let children in.

Unwritten then were the stories of adventurous girls
and striving women that I spirited home in the nineties,
from the school and public libraries, like it was my due—

Alanna the Lioness, disguised as a boy and fearful her first period
spelled death.

Birle, who tried to stop a thief, but found a partner as she traveled
on fortune’s wheel.

Cimorene, who would rather make cherries jubilee for dragons
than marry a good-looking boy.

Harry, wielding a blue sword in the desert, intent not only on
defending, but uniting those she loves on opposite sides.

Did the little girls in 1875, who could not pass the library doors,
daydream these stories alongside their chores and share
tales under their quilts in late-night whispers?
When they grew up and learned that the world
was so much worse than they’d thought, did they retreat
to their dreams or did they remind themselves
that nothing would get better
if they didn’t try?

They must have.
Because I have lived a life of far more choices
than any of them ever did. Our games of pretend, our fantasies of heroines
who save the creature in the woods or their sister from the grave,
their parents from misfortune, their village from the plague,
are not a place to hide, but a map to guide us
and a rallying cry.

---

Tomorrow, October 11, is Let Freedom Read Day. Learn about how to fight censorship and support your library at bannedbooksweek.org/let-freedom-read-day.

I am immensely grateful for these wonderful books, the authors who wrote them, the libraries that carried them, and my parents, who have always loved books and shared that love with their kids.

Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce
On Fortune’s Wheel by Cynthia Voigt
Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede
The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley