My mother is a criminal.

Or she could be, if she were still alive and lived in one of several states that seek to prosecute librarians for making books available that could be deemed harmful to minors.  (A new law in Arkansas, for example, says school and public librarians, as well as teachers, can be imprisoned for up to six years or fined $10,000 if they distribute obscene or harmful books. Enforcement has been suspended temporarily by a court injunction.)

Back in the days before laptops and cell phones, Mama taught my siblings and me that when you wondered how to do something or what something meant or where something came from, you could find a book that would answer your question. And the place to find that book, assuming we didn’t have it at home, was in the local library.

So that’s where we went — with Mama when we were young children, and by ourselves when we were teenagers. At age 12, I learned the unabridged facts of life in the biology section of the local university library, where our mother was working on her bachelor’s degree in library science. As a teenager, I learned the evils of segregation and racism in a powerful book titled “For Us, the Living,” by Myrlie Evers. She was the wife of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, who in 1963 was gunned down in the driveway of the couple’s Jackson, Miss., home.

In between, I read a lot of biographies, young-adult fiction and comic books — from “A Wrinkle in Time” to “Archie” and “Superman.” I did not read any pornography or books that were filled with violence or high levels of sexuality, because without being heavy-handed, Mama taught us to use our judgment in selecting reading materials.

We children grew up and Mama grew older. She taught in public schools, worked in public libraries and eventually wound up as post librarian at Fort Polk, La., where the young soldiers loved her because she was always happy to help them find something they would enjoy reading.

Her favorite patrons were the ones who came up to her desk and said, “I’d like to read something, but I don’t know what I’m looking for.” Off they’d go, into the stacks, as she questioned the soldier about his or her interests, hobbies, etc.

She didn’t try to control or judge or censor what the soldiers read. They were adults, and her job was to present a wide array of books, magazines, videos and other materials that they would enjoy reading — including Playboy and Cosmopolitan magazines. When a patron — librarians always call customers “patrons” — once asked her why the library subscribed to Playboy and Cosmopolitan, she replied, “Because the soldiers want to read them.”

A sizable percentage of her patrons were soldiers’ spouses and children, and part of her job was to arrange children’s and teenagers’ sections so that they would find interesting, entertaining and age-appropriate books. But at the checkout counter, she didn’t try to police what they were taking home.

She figured that was their parents’ job.

Thirty years later, monitoring what kids read continues to be parents’ job — along with who their children text, what movies they watch, what websites they click on and who they hang out with. It is not an easy job, and parents have every right to be concerned about what’s influencing their offspring.

So if you are concerned about the classification of books at your local library, contact its library board. But rather than trying to control what the rest of us read, please focus your efforts on the presentation of age-appropriate materials for minors — while understanding that that determination can be subjective and you may not always agree with it, in which case you may decide to keep your children home.

Above all, know that when politicians start calling for librarians’ heads, they’re engaging in a cynical and blatant attempt to woo you and other voters. I know that my mother the criminal would agree: You’re a fool if you let yourself succumb to their attempts to use librarians as whipping boys in today’s culture wars.

Frances Coleman is a former editorial page editor of the Mobile Press-Register. Email her at [email protected] and “like” her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/prfrances.