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Floor Speech
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Ms. SMITH. Mr. President, I rise today to speak out about the absurd book bannings that are happening in schools across our country. I want to thank Senator Butler for inviting me to speak today about this issue.
You know, I was reflecting, as I was listening to Senator Butler speak in the beginning, about what reading meant to me when I was a young person and when I was first understanding what it felt like to be immersed in a book that I loved--that feeling of learning, of being able to imagine myself living different lives, being able to think about what different experiences would be like, and understanding that my life was not everybody's life, that there is such diversity of life in this world, and being exposed to that through reading was so exciting to me.
Also, as I was seeing how I was not like everybody else, I was also able to see myself in the people whom I read about--both my own struggles as well as triumphs in the stories that I read--and that is the gift of reading. So to think about the absurdity of trying to block that gift from people because of one's own views about what is OK and what is not OK is, I think, what is at issue here.
So I appreciate very much having the opportunity to read into the Record incredible authors whose works have been unfairly banned.
To my colleagues, I think it is interesting that, just last week, the American Library Association released new data documenting how prevalent this is. They are documenting book challenges that are happening throughout the United States, and they found a huge surge in these challenges--a 65-percent increase in challenges to books just in 2023. It is the highest level the ALA has ever recorded.
Among the books that were banned last year is a book called ``And Tango Makes Three.'' This is a book by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell. It is a demonstration of the absurdity of banning books--this book in particular. It is based on the real story of two penguins in the Central Park Zoo who create a family and raise a chick together. Both of these penguins were male, and so a Florida school district banned the book because of their State's ``don't say gay'' law. Now I am going to read a bit of the text because I think it shows so much. Here we go.
[C]hildren and their parents aren't the only families at the zoo. The animals make families of their own. There are red panda bear families, with mothers and fathers and furry red panda bear cubs. There are monkey dads and monkey moms raising noisy monkey babies. There are toad families, and toucan families, and cotton-top tamarin families too.
And in the penguin house there are penguin families. Every year at the very same time, the girl penguins start noticing the boy penguins. And the boy penguins start noticing the girls. When the right girl and the right boy find each other, they become a couple.
Two penguins in the penguin house were a little bit different. One was named Roy, the other was named Silo. Roy and Silo were both boys. But they did everything together.
They bowed to each other. And they walked together. They sang to each other. And [they] swam together.
They didn't spend much time with the girl penguins, and the girl penguins didn't spend much time with them. Instead, Roy and Silo wound their necks around each other. Their keeper Mr. Gramzay noticed the two penguins and thought to himself, ``They must be in love.''
Now, I have four grandchildren, and I think that reading a story like this to them--reading this story to them--is exactly what should be happening as children and people of all ages really think about what it means to love one another, what it means to be a family, and how we can come together in that idea rather than being driven apart.
I hope and will do everything I can to make sure that my four grandchildren live in a future where books that affirm that families can come in all different forms and in all different shapes and sizes aren't considered worth banning.
I thank Senator Butler for organizing this discussion.
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