Girl Scout Censored in Gold Award Honor for Banned Books Library

In a move that couldn’t hit the nail on the head any harder, Hanover County, Virginia, commissioners censored a proclamation announcing a Gold Award honor given to a teen Girl Scout for her work combating book banning in her community.

In a move that couldn’t hit the nail on the head any harder, Hanover County, Virginia, commissioners censored a proclamation announcing a Gold Award honor given to a teen Girl Scout for her work combating book banning in her community. 

Kate Lindley, a member of the local Girl Scouts troop, was to be honored with the Gold Award - the highest honor given in the Girl Scouts - by the Hanover County Board of Supervisors for her community service and for her drive to engage the Hanover County community, which has been a frequent target for book banners. Lindley successfully launched the app Free to Read to keep residents up to speed on book banning efforts and to educate users on the books being impacted by these policies while also providing them with an alternative place where they could find the titles available. She then installed free banned book libraries in her community, partnering with local businesses. 

But in recognizing her work, board member Michael Hertzberg omitted mention of any of the policies and measures that inspired Lindley to launch her Girl Scouts project. 

Lindley’s drive to combat book banning came after school board officials in Hanover County approved a controversial policy that allows residents to challenge a book they deem to have “sexually explicit” content regardless of educational assessments performed by librarians and educators and for the decision to remove the book from school libraries to come solely from the school board. The ruling, which passed on a 5-2 vote in June 2023, has resulted in the removal of dozens of books, primarily involving LGBT+ topics and characters. 

Following the success of the Free to Read app, Lindley worked with local businesses and community members to install free banned book libraries throughout the community. Dubbed “Banned Book Nooks,” she worked with We Think in Ink and Morr Donuts to install these libraries so that anyone in the community could access banned titles. She also provided copies of banned titles to Little Free Libraries throughout her community. 

The censorship of the proclamation announcing Lindley’s Gold Award honor highlights the ongoing book banning battle in Hanover County. Earlier this year in March, the Hanover Public Library received backlash from a patron for reading The Family Book by Todd Parr, which features gay parents, during toddler storytime. The patron took the complaint all the way to the district supervisor, which has since led to pro-book banning administration to introduce other measures to further restrict children’s reading material, including a $53,000 project that will divide middle schoolers and their books from middle graders and from juvenile readers. 

In addition, right-wing board members are in the process of appointing two new school board members. 

Not only is Lindley’s work in the community being censored by the adults leading her community indicative of what is to come but also represents the majority opinion held by the individuals impacted the most by these bans: the children and teens of our communities, who serve as the target audience for many of these books.