From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is Adelaide.

In the White Hot debate over who controls what happens in America's schools, a new battleground

has emerged. The books that sit on library shelves.

Today, my colleague, Alexandra Alter, with the story of what happened when parents in

one town trying to remove a handful of books that they said were explicit and sexually

inappropriate and the messy battle that ensued.

That's Wednesday, December 7th.

Alexandra, tell me about Martha Hickson.

Martha Hickson is a high school librarian in Anandell, New Jersey, which is a small town

near the Pennsylvania border. When I spoke to Martha on the phone, she told me she's been

a librarian for about 18 years now.

So becoming a librarian was not always my life plan. The first half of my career, I was

in corporate public relations for AT&T. After the events of September 11th, I did kind

of an inventory of my life. I had always had in the back of my mind that I would like to

teach and work with kids. I wasn't able to have kids of my own and I really felt that was

a piece of my life that was missing.

I looked into librarianship and one of the things I love about being in a library, especially

a school library, is it's kind of a refuge for kids.

She's somebody who sees her library as a resource for community, not just for what they read,

but as kind of a sanctuary for people.

You don't have to read if you don't want to when you come in the library. I just want

you to relax and feel comfortable. But on the literary side too, reading is something

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