When I was growing up, the selection of children’s and young adult books does not even come close to matching what exists now. I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s with Judy Blume and E.B. White and Sweet Valley High; all good books, but nothing close to representing who I was, unless it was a random side character at the fringe of the friend group, never really belonging and barely mentioned in passing. I would have given anything to find a character like me who was the star of the story… and I was a middle class white girl in suburbia who looked like the characters on the page. What about all of the other kids who didn’t?

And that wasn’t the only problem. Because there weren’t stories about the kids who didn’t look or feel or believe or function differently, I didn’t learn about them or their lives. I read a lot and loved books. I looked for new and different stories. In middle school I started devouring Harlequin Presents titles because they took place in exotic locations I knew nothing about.

Today the expanse of books that exists for kids to find themselves on the pages has vastly improved. Children and teens are now able to see characters who look like themselves on the pages, no matter their race or ethnicity. They are able to read about characters struggling with their sexual or gender identity, read stories that represent their culture or religion, find characters that struggle with the same physical or neurological differences that they do. And kids are able to read about others, allowing them to understand and learn and grow as humans. It’s one of the best things that could have happened.

So why are some people so intent on taking it away? Not just for their own kids, which is bad enough, but for all kids. It’s shameful and disgusting that these people are even being taken seriously. They say that they are afraid for the children and want to protect them, but in reality their closed-mindedness does more harm than good.

We have to keep fighting to keep books available to kids, to ensure that all children are able to see themselves as the hero in a story, to make sure that they are exposed to and understand the differences we have and how we are alike.