On Oct. 7, DeLand Pride hosted a free book giveaway at Sidecar Home Market and Bar in Downtown DeLand. The event featured hundreds of books that have been targeted for censorship. The various categories of books included children’s and youth books, as well as books featuring LGBTQ+ characters and themes.
This “Diversity and Inclusion Book Giveaway,” the first of its kind in DeLand, was a massive success, organizers said.
Bans of books at the local and state levels, both recent and long-standing, led DeLand Pride Advocacy Committee Co-Chair volunteers Nick Ducharme and David Roberts to take action.
The event started with a book drive, where businesses and individuals donated new and used books. The Muse Book Shop, The Family Book Shop, Cliff’s Books and the DeLand Quakers were all big donors and helped DeLand Pride collect a total of 821 books for the drive. By the end of the event, the group had given away 418 books.
About half of the books distributed were ones that have been banned in school libraries across the country, or ones that feature characters who are Black, Indigenous, or people of color.
After a year living in DeLand, Ducharme and Roberts knew that they wanted to increase access to important books.
“It’s something that’s important to everyone, and that can save lives and can also educate people about difficult topics like injustice, be it racially, or in terms of LGBTQ identities,” Roberts said. “It’s just something we really wanted to support in terms of getting books that are being taken away from people back into their hands as much as possible.”
The event coincided with the American Library Association’s National Banned Book Week, Oct. 1-7. According to the association’s website, the week is meant to celebrate the freedom to read and spotlight current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools.
Local teachers and librarians came out in droves to snag books for young people in their communities, and community members grabbed books for their personal collections. One such individual, Jillian Semmel, is a student at Stetson and an avid reader.
“I am ecstatic. I got five books… People were talking about the banned book Gender Queer and why it’s one of the most banned books and why we should read it, so I grabbed a copy too,” Semmel said. “Everyone was so happy to talk and bond over great literature. It was awesome.”
CARMEN’S BOOK HAUL — Beacon reporter Carmen Cruz’s final book haul, which took a painstaking 20 minutes to land on since the selection of candidates was so incredible, included four books featuring Black characters and people of color. Two titles, All Boys Aren’t Blue and I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, have been the center of controversy and book bannings in recent years.
The organizers were thrilled to see the interest in this kind of literature despite local and national efforts to restrict access to certain kinds of books.
For the first hour or so, a counterprotester holding a sign with an image of the Bible stood across the street from the book drive.
“The juxtaposition of the event, with the happy and lovely people, and then the random protester was really interesting,” Semmel said. “It was like two halves of the coin that is DeLand.”
This had little if any effect on the book drive itself.
Even still, the event experienced far less pushback from the community than organizers were expecting. By and large, the reception was extremely positive.
“It’s notable that yeah, sometimes hate does eat up all the air in the room. But sometimes, if you can set the tone like I think we did with this event this weekend, love can be what populates that airspace instead,” Roberts said. “It doesn’t leave much room for the haters to get a foothold.”
The books that remain after the event will be given to the DeLand Quakers for their upcoming book drive in December so that they may continue being distributed to the community. DeLand Pride hopes to make its Diversity and Inclusion Book Giveaway event an annual, if not semiannual, one.
“It’s important that we use every legal avenue available to us in order to support the right to read,” Roberts said. “We encourage people to speak out at all levels of government, including school board meetings, and just to be present as much as you can and to make your voice heard.”
On the other side of the county…
On the east side of Volusia County, the American Federation of Teachers partnered with the Florida Education Association, Volusia United Educators and Mayor Derrick Henry’s Literacy Initiative to distribute 30,000 free books Oct. 7 as well as to recognize and educate folks about Banned Book Week. This event took place at the John H. Dickerson Community Center in Daytona Beach, and it had a DJ, face painting, hot dogs, Italian ice, bounce houses and more.
The giveaway was one of many across the nation hosted by the AFT. More than 10 million books have been donated and given away for free over the years in partnership with the annual event.
