This is an opinion column.

I read as a child. Under covers with a flashlight, when I was supposed to be asleep.

I read of ghosts, from the treasure of Kathryn Tucker Windham’s mind, but didn’t come to fear them.

I read about a little girl named Heidi, on the Swiss Alps. I wanted to know her, but not to be her.

I read – this when I was very young – of Bess the landlord’s daughter – the landlord’s black-eyed daughter – as she was attacked and bound to a musket. As she watched for her love in moonlight, and died in the darkness there. By her own hand.

I felt pain and anger and things I did not understand.

I read of trolls, but didn’t believe in them until the internet came along.

I read of a lion, and of a witch, and of a wardrobe, but I did not try to step through. I read of a boy who refused to grow up, and though I tried, I could not be him.

I read book after book about the great men of America and the world, of heroes who did remarkable things. I learned later that some were fiction disguised as fact.

When I was a little older I read book after book of fiction: Brave New World; Fahrenheit 451; 1984; Animal Farm; Lord of the Flies; Catch-22. I found out later they were as much fact as fiction.

They banned Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World at Alabama’s Foley High School once, nattering that its characters had contempt for religion and marriage. Irony. Or inevitability.

I read of Greek gods cheating on their wives, of King David in the Holy Bible sending the husband of his mistress to death on the front lines. It made me angry.

I read of incest in the Book of Genesis – that book being required reading as a child – and in Leviticus of death sentences for men and women who dared have extramarital affairs. I wondered why so many Bible readers ignored that one.

I read of sex and death and a kid named Holden Caulfield. I read of the unjust trial and tragic killing of a Black man named Tom Robinson. Again, fiction told me more than Alabama schools would tell me was fact.

I read of a strong woman named Calpurnia who held on to dignity in unjust times, of a drug-addicted and racist old lady named Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose whose flaws made me want to be something else.

The failings of people helped me see them better.

I read of an invisible man and a Jewish girl named Anne Frank. A horrifying world that helped me see people I did not recognize around me.

I read of sex, wrapped in metaphor, in the Scarlet Letter, and lacily unwrapped in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which told me things I did not understand, and still may not.

I read of war and battle and deceit and genocide and none of it hurt like the death of a dog named Old Yeller. I read of places unlike my own neighborhood, things I did not have, struggles I did not know, and people unlike those I had seen. I did not become them, but I saw them. And I knew the world was bigger than me.

I go on and on about books, about libraries, about those who think it a virtue to hide ideas and histories from children. Because the alternative is to teach them not to think, not to feel, not to question. Which is like locking their mind in a dungeon.

Last year book banning efforts reached the highest levels in four decades, and this year looks to top that. Books about diversity, about race and gender and inclusion of voices long suppressed, are the most targeted, and the most likely to be ripped from schools and libraries across America and Alabama.

The mayor of Ozark asked how to remove dozens of books from the young adult section of the library, and a library trustee offered to bring a match.

Real librarians stand strong, but they suffer consequences they don’t deserve.

The “decency” police – they use awfully foul language in my inbox, incidentally – call these librarians, and anyone who appreciates free thought – groomers and pedos and pervs. It is a villainous tactic based on falsehoods and bigotry. It is its own form of indecency.

And it is dangerous.

Matt Layne, the president of the Alabama Library Association, last week sent a letter to members – and in defense of members. You can see the full letter below.

“Librarians are being harassed and targeted on social media,” he wrote. “Defamatory and slanderous names are being launched at our colleagues across the state, and so we are refocusing and responding directly to those who would challenge the most basic of our Constitutional rights as Americans and Alabamians. We dare defend our rights and the rights of all members of our community to have access to the books and information they choose to read.”

The Alabama Library Association also issued a strong statement about those dangers. It is also below.

The association “categorically rejects all efforts to censor or restrict access to materials from any library based on content; additionally, we denounce the increased harassment, verbal attacks, threats library employees and board members have endured from the public.

“We acknowledge the right and responsibility of parents and guardians to guide the reading choices of their children. Such rights should not in any way inhibit the rights of others to read or view materials of their choosing.”

It is a critical fight. Not just for the right to know, but the right to grow.

John Archibald is a two-time Pulitzer winner for AL.com.