December 2025 – Jenny Arch

Sometimes being a children’s librarian looks like: reading books at storytime, blowing bubbles for babies, putting out fresh coloring sheets, filling a display with books for Asian-American Heritage and Jewish-American Heritage Month (both in May, along with Mental Health Awareness month), contacting balloon artists and magicians and zoo educators and musicians to come to the library, or planning summer reading…in November.

And sometimes, it looks like listening as people tell you about a family dog who’s approaching death, or a new pregnancy that means a child is about to become a sibling, or an upcoming move out of state, or an impending divorce. “Do you have a book about that?” they’ll ask, after revealing this big thing they’re facing, and yes, I do.

I’m grateful to the authors and illustrators who bring these stories to the page with such sensitivity, creativity, tenderness, and humor. I’m grateful to the agents and editors and publishers who help these stories become books in libraries and bookstores. And I’m grateful to the people who come to the library and trust us to find the books that can help them through whatever they are facing in life today.

Here’s yet another reason we shouldn’t ban books about tough topics: books help us through hard times. They help grown-ups explain inevitable life-and-death experiences (babies being born; pets and grandparents dying) and other big changes (divorce, moving) and or things that loom large in littles’ lives. Here are just a few books on some of these subjects; there are many, many more.