Well, that was interesting 

It started with an unassuming post on Facebook. I should have realized that social media was just going to get me into hot water.

Matinicus Island (yes, I am naming the place this week, search engines be damned) has a small community library. It’s basically two pleasingly-renovated storage sheds filled with books, a wireless Internet hotspot, and a couple of picnic tables. This summer we’re going to add a bike rack, a bike tire pump, and maybe a shelf near an outlet for the convenience of tourists charging cell phones. There are no granite lions either side of the steps. There is no paid staff, there is no closing time, there are no library cards, there are no bathrooms. When I say small, I mean small.

Our library has a genuinely grass-roots origin story and was not handed down to us poor

benighted savages from On High by some corporation seeking attention and paid-off neighborhood bona fides (as had once been tried, years ago—an effort soundly rejected by the community for a list of reasons including a pretentious corporate helicopter landing here without advance notice and allegedly peppering an islander’s little Cessna with rocks).

As the library’s office flunky I try to post something now and then online, just to remind the world that we exist. Typically, it’s a cartoon with a library theme, or a re-post of some inspirational fluff, maybe from another tiny library elsewhere in the boondocks of the world. A couple of months ago, one of our occasional public comments indicated that we did not see eye-to-eye with those who took it upon themselves to ban books. That, I assumed, was an entirely unremarkable position coming from a library.

However, the topic of book-banning, for real and in theory, hit the headlines recently and before long a friend who works for the Bangor Daily News got in touch with me. We talked about the library and its humble start, the wireless hub, the all-volunteer crew, the honor-system check-out, the cool new Children’s Room with the big dipper painted on the floor, the grant we got from the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation, all our Elisabeth Ogilvie novels and copies of National Fishermen…

Oh, and of course we have “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and “Huckleberry Finn,” and “Harry Potter.”

Then, the Associated Press got involved. No offense to whoever wrote that copy because obviously they meant no harm (no doubt someone thought they were helping us,) but whoever penned their version of our story jumped to a few conclusions. They never called to check with us here, anyway.

Their take on our situation was, first, that we needed all the books we could get and second, we specialized in banned books so we wanted every book that had ever been rejected by anybody, anywhere, for any reason. Ye gods and little fishes.

My job immediately became damage control. I was determined to respond to all who made contact, but I found myself wishing for less of the world’s attention. Everything from the Daily Mail (in the U.K.) to CBS News in Dallas, TX to Smithsonian Magazine to the Drew Barrymore Show, whatever that is, picked up on the AP story. Some of them contacted me. The town office and the local electrician were also getting calls and e-mails. We started a new library e-mail account, which we’d never needed before.

Everybody wanted to send us books. Somebody from a telecoms company in Arkansas which happened to have a cable crew working in Maine offered to bring us banned books in their bucket trucks. Somebody wrote to ask if we could use his 1923 edition of “Little Black Sambo.” Many authors got in touch. One wrote that his book had been banned by the Florida Department of Corrections and did we therefore want it? And everybody wanted to send us “Maus.”

The NY Times got in touch, and I chatted with a nice reporter, but to their credit somebody realized there wasn’t much of a story here. I believe our size and insular location was the only story, really. It brings to mind how every time they need a schoolteacher or postmaster on any Shetland Isle or storm-swept Hebridean ledgepile, it makes international news. Those articles always reach us, by the way--in multiples.

We told our community that we’d order any book that had been banned elsewhere if requested or recommended by a library user, and I can report that “I Need a New Butt” is finally here after having been back-ordered for extreme popularity. I can also report that “And Tango Makes Three” is a cute little nonfiction children’s book worthy of no opprobrium at all. Finally, we are in possession of multiple copies of “Maus,” thank you, so no need to send any more.

Published in the Rockland, Maine Free Press April, 2022