When Silent Spring came out in 1962, it was an instant best-seller and led to the establishment of the EPA, as well as the ban of harmful pesticides such as DDT. But Rachel Carson’s seminal work also shifted our way of thinking about nature. For the first time, the environment was not just something out there that could be tracked and measured, but something that lived inside all of us. 

You can read a transcript of this episode on our website, and visit learn more about the topics brought up in this episode.

• Check out our booklist with books recommended for this episode.
• This episode was a collaboration with the podcast Thresholds. You can listen to Jordan Kisener’s full interview with Ayana Elizabeth Johnson here. And check out Johnson’s new book, What If We Get It Right? 
• Read Bob Musil’s book, Rachel Carson and Her Sisters, and learn more about the Rachel Carson Council. 
• Read Rachel Frazin’s book, Poisoning the Well, which she co-wrote with Sharon Udasin.
• Watch Rachel Carson’s full speech to the National Women’s Democratic Club in 1962.

Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer who documents the extremes, from nightclubs to war zones. She’s also the author of several books, including Drawing Blood and Brothers of the Gun, a memoir of the Syrian War co-written with Marwan Hisham. We sat down with Crabapple to talk about the difference between words and images, making art in the world, and the power of cartoonists to disrupt fascism.

You can read a transcript of this episode here. And check out the following links:

• Check out our booklist with books recommended for this episode.
• Read Molly Crabapple’s Drawing Blood, and you can pre-order her new book about the Jewish Labor Bund.
• See Molly’s drawings and articles about the Dallas Six and the NYC taxi driver strike. You can also read Molly’s interview with Art Spiegelman.
• Art Spiegelman’s comic collaboration with Joe Sacco was published in The New York Review of Books earlier this year. You can check out Sacco’s Palestine and his more recent War on Gaza from the library.

Art Spiegelman is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the graphic novel Maus, the story of his parents’ experience during the Holocaust. We got to sit down with Spiegelman at Brooklyn Public Library’s recording studio earlier this month to talk about Maus almost forty years after it first came out, about censorship, about the war in Gaza, and about what it means to stand up for others.

You can read a transcript of this episode on our website, and check out these further resources:

• Check out our booklist with books recommended by Art Spiegelman, and more.
• Art Spiegelman’s comic collaboration with Joe Sacco was published in The New York Review of Books earlier this year. You can check out Sacco’s Palestine and his more recent War on Gaza from the library.
• Watch Art Spiegelman discuss MetaMaus with Dan Nadel at Brooklyn Public Library.

Art Spiegelman’s Maus almost single-handedly elevated comics from throw-away inserts in newspapers to a serious literary art worthy of winning the highest award in book publishing. But it’s not an accident that this book is coming back to us now. Maus was swept once again into the public eye three years ago, when the conservative movement to target marginalized stories took aim at the beloved graphic novel. In this episode, we examine how comic book censorship in the 1950s led to the creation of Maus, and eventually shifted the way we tell stories about resistance, memory, and authoritarianism.

You can read a transcript of this episode on our website. Further resources:

• Check out our booklist with books recommended by Art Spiegelman, and more.
• Read Amy Kurzweil’s Flying Couch and Molly Crabapple’s Drawing Blood. You can read more about both of them on their websites.
• Art Spiegelman’s comic collaboration with Joe Sacco was published in The New York Review of Books earlier this year. You can check out Sacco’s Palestine and his more recent War on Gaza from the library.
• Learn more about the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the history of comic book censorship.
• Listen to our interviews with Maia Kobabe, author of Gender Queer, and Mike Curato, author of Flamer from our previous series, Borrowed and Banned.
• Watch Art Spiegelman discuss MetaMaus with Dan Nadel at Brooklyn Public Library.

This episode comes to us from our friends at Book Riot! In this segment, you'll hear Book Riot’s Erica Ezeifedi speak with Rodney Freeman, a librarian and producer of the forthcoming documentary, Are You a Librarian? The Untold Story of Black Librarians. This is part of their Reading and Resistance series, which looks at the relationship between reading and the pursuit of freedom in America. 

Subscribe to Book Riot: The Podcast wherever you listen!

Matt de la Peña is the Newbery Medal-winning author of seven Young Adult novels and five picture books. We talked with him about writing small stories and what it means to write a book that is, as he calls it, “Diversity 2.0.”

You can read a transcript of this episode on our website.

• Check out our booklist with books by Matt de la Peña and more!
• Learn more about de la Peña on his website, and see more illustrations by Christian Robinson.
• Protect the freedom to read by getting involved with Books Unbanned.

Meg Medina is an award-winning author of books for kids and young adults, and she was the 2023-2024 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. We talked to her about what it meant to be the first Latinx author in that role, about the need for more diverse kids books, and the importance of reading in families.

You can read a transcript of this episode on our website.

• Check out our booklist with books by Meg Medina and more!
• Learn more about the We Need Diverse Books movement. 
• Read about the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature at the Library of Congress.

The Snowy Day wasn’t the first picture book to feature a Black child as its beloved protagonist, but it might be the most visible. When it came out in 1962, it challenged the publishing industry to champion books that depict kids of color. Today, we find ourselves in a moment not so different from the one Ezra Jack Keats was in when he sat down to create The Snowy Day. We are, once again, fighting for the right to let kids read the books they love, and we’re still reminding each other that the characters kids see in those books really matters. 

Read a transcript of this episode on our website and check out these great links:

• Check out our booklist with titles related to The Snowy Day
• Learn more about the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, the EJK Award, and the yearly bookmaking competition for kids in NYC public schools.
• Check out these digitized copies of The Brownies’ Book, books by Black creators
• Read about diversity in children’s book publishing, from “The All-White World of Children’s Books” (1965) to more recent history, like this 2018 graphic that compiles data from the Cooperative Children’s Book Center.
• Learn more about the most frequently banned children’s books in schools (PEN America) and, as always, check out our Books Unbanned initiative for ways you can help.
• Attend an in-person event with Art Spiegelman at BPL’s Central Library on September 10th. 

When Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States came out in 1980, it literally rocked the boat. Instead of starting where most histories of the Americas start — on the deck of Columbus’s ship as it approached land — Howard Zinn flipped the script, focusing instead on what the people standing on the shore would have seen. In this episode, we look at the ripple effects of Zinn’s radical take on history. 

You can read a transcript of this episode on our web page.

• Check out our booklist with titles related to A People’s History of the United States.
• You can find Nick Witham’s book Popularizing the Past at the University of Chicago Press.
• Learn more about the ReVisioning History series from Beacon Press.
• Read more about Howard Zinn, and visit the Zinn Education Project for tons of resources for teachers and students.
• History books are one of the subject areas targeted for censorship right now. Learn what you can do to help by visiting our Books Unbanned homepage, or listening to Borrowed and Banned, our previous series about the state of book banning in America.

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, a lawyer, and the founder and CEO of Freedom Reads, an organization with the goal of bringing a library to every cell block in America. We talked with him about what he read – and wrote – while he was incarcerated, and what it taught him about what it means to be free, to be loved, and to be part of a community.

Read a transcript of this episode on our website, and find books by Betts in our library catalog.