OverDrive is one of the largest purveyors of online ebooks and magazines. It includes the Libby app, which is available at the Christian County Library.
You can read about it HERE. FTA: "Any
Christian
County Library cardholder--including
children--can download the Libby app. Libby
is owned
by a
company named OverDrive(Steve
Potashis
the founder
and CEO),one
of the
largest purveyor of ebooks and audiobooks in the business. According
to an archived New
Yorker article, An App Called Libby and the
Surprisingly Big Business of Library E-Books,"It
is the company behind the popular app Libby, which, as the Apple App
Store puts it, “...lets you log in to your local library to access
ebooks, audiobooks, and magazines, all for the reasonable price of
free. OverDrive
also offers Sora,
a program geared toward students and available at participating
schools."
Secretary of State Denny Hoskins has paused state funding for OverDrive, according to the Missouri Independent"...until it can prove that it has as safeguards barring children from accessing inappropriate content. The action comes after a Missouri
Senate committee heard a bill last week seeking regulation of digital
library catalogs, alleging Overdrive-run app Sora allows minors to
access explicit sexual material."
This is great news and bodes well for protecting Missouri's minor children from age-inappropriate and sexually explicit materials in public libraries.
David Rice over at Hick Christian has shared a timeline and paper trail that gives an idea of what has been happening with changes at the Christian County Library. He says:
"This analysis of the board dynamics suggests the possibility of a
strategic "setup" designed to generate litigation, potentially creating
financial benefit for certain parties while advancing particular policy
objectives through judicial rather than democratic means."
Read the whole thing HERE and come to your own conclusion.
This clip should be shown to anyone who thinks doctors should be allowed to give children puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery to modify their bodies. It is heartbreaking. 😥 😥😥 pic.twitter.com/1TmrBrfwin
— 🐘 Erin Brewer #StopTransingKids (@ErinBrewerin) March 6, 2025
For children, libraries and schools should be places of great and good literature, of the exploration of ideas, of intellectual development. The children's section of a library should appeal to a child's aesthetics--colorful, comfortable, a place of fulfilled curiosity about animals and plants and planes and rockets, of the adventures of other children, the overcoming of adversity, and yes, the pains of growing up. A library should be a safe space in which to experience all those things.
Neither children or their parents should be concerned about library books that push early sexualization, gender ideology, or self-hatred and victimization through Critical Race Theory. Parents should not have to worry that books teaching Social Emotional Learning are priming their children to believe and behave in a way that is foreign to what is taught in the home.
But this is precisely what is happening in libraries and schools all across our nation. And as I have mentioned numerous times on this blog, the Christian County Library (CCL) includes in the children's and teens' sections numerous books advocating for just such agendas. In over two years of citizens becoming active to solve this issue, almost all such books remain freely accessible to children.
It means children whose parents have dropped them off at the library, or who are perusing the adult section or watching their other children do not have immediate knowledge of what kind of books their child may be picking up. It means parents are blamed when a child stumbles across a book that pushes transgenderism, that normalizes nudity and trans-surgery mastectomy scars.
Such books for children are purposefully shelved in and among books about other subjects. You never know where you will find these little bombs. It means parents would actually have to be hovering over their child to see what book is picked up. Then, because those books often give little indication of what is inside the cover, a parent would have to examine (read) that book immediately to determine its suitability for their child.
The politician below is reading a
book currently housed in our CCL that advocates for childhood
transitioning from a boy to a girl.
This is the
Democrat Senator who gave the rebuttal to Trump‘s speech reading an
LGBTQ book to children about how kids can be transgender pic.twitter.com/kBZOrflC7r
ALL ACCESS means parents can never be sure their local tax-funded library is a safe space for childhood innocence. It means ideologically-driven authors, book publishers, trade organizations and library staff feel their "right" to indoctrinate children trumps parents' rights and community standards.
Are any of the books listed HERE censored or banned? Nope. They are all available in our library, bookstores, and at online stores. The ALA's "Banned Books Week" always promotes some classic books that someone, somewhere, sometime felt were inappropriate. And, all the "banned books" are sitting on the shelf in the library display.
Unavoidable--It's on Purpose
There are very few online sites that
properly review these books. The publishers and their toady reviewers
give glowing reports that often do not apprise a parent of the issues
within. "Prestigious" book awards are lavished on many of these books,
leading parents to think these books must uphold a certain standard.
One of the books featured in the video below, The Marvels, is located in the Sparta and Ozark children's sections of the CCL (it begins at the 2:50-minute mark). It includes children cross-dressing, an uncle's partner dying of AIDs, and gender confusion.
The ALA and MLA never complain about books being censored in the adult section. You don't see long lists of adult materials being featured. It's always about the children's ALL ACCESS "rights."
Note the awards The Marvels has received. These tactics are used to shut down parents' objections to materials that should be curated away from "all access" to minor children.
Do not forget the anguish of the young woman above. Where she was introduced to gender ideology, and how she transitioned so young is not apparent from the video. But public libraries and schools should never be a vector for such things.
