“Front lines,” “in the crosshairs” and “boots on the ground” are not phrases that leap to mind when describing the responsibilities of a school librarian.
For the intrepid nine profiled in Kim A. Snyder’s gripping documentary “The Librarians,” these terms have become elemental to the job description in the United States in recent years.
At school board meetings in different states, the librarians are accused of “grooming” children through pornographic material. Most of the supposedly problematic themes deal with race, sexuality or gender. Picture books have even drawn heat for depicting naked children, animals and statues.
Snyder (“Us Kids”) focuses on actions in Florida, New Jersey, Louisiana and Texas, where a list of 850 titles compiled in 2021 by State Representative Matt Krause, Republican of Texas, was used to cull the stacks. Nationwide, the group Moms for Liberty packs school boards with candidates who wield Scripture in the name of child safety. In one dumbfounding instance, the Bible is cited as the ultimate standard for nonfiction writing.
At stake are First Amendment rights, and the librarians are shown as the vanguard of efforts to protect them. That one of these school employees appears onscreen in identity-camouflaging silhouette underscores the level of hostility they can face.
Several of the women featured in “The Librarians” were fired for refusing to remove books from shelves — or sometimes for merely asking questions about the directive to do so. The sense of emergency makes the profiles in courage all the more heartening. From its superb opening-credits sequence paying tribute to card catalogs of yore to its sharp selection of vintage clips and intimate reportage, “The Librarians” is as well-crafted as it is profoundly alarming.
The Librarians
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters.
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