Yesterday, Montgomery County officials approved a resolution to receive a donation of Brave books for each of the county libraries, thanks to the efforts of Michelle Nuckolls and personal financial contributions from County Judge Mark Keough, County Attorney B.D. Griffin and District Attorney Brett Ligon.

 

Nuckolls recalls the many challenges she faced in the process (below). She’s already working on placing the Tuttle Twins (free market economics) books in area libraries. She would like to see the publishers of these books given “approved” status by the library so it can purchase the books directly. According to Nuckolls, most “approved” library vendors are not publishing conservative children’s literature. Her petition for getting these books into the libraries is here, and she has a deadline of May 1.

 

 

 

In January, my friend Shayla Parker and I hosted a Brave Books Story Hour at the South Branch Library. Brave Books is a local publisher that publishes Christian and Conservative picture books for children ages 4-11. They tackle difficult cultural issues in an appropriate way.

 

Prior to that and over the years, we had noticed more and more “woke” and liberal literature in the children’s section, but interestingly enough, we were not seeing the conservative balance. Years ago, I had looked for Evangelical Christian picture books in the library to read to my children and could not find anything. (Since then, I have found a few scattered at different libraries, but none at my local library.)

 

After the story hour, my friend and I decided to see if we could change this. First, we encouraged friends to go through the process to suggest purchases, which is an option on the library website. We got emails back saying that the books had to be reviewed by the right literary journals. We asked about the literary journals, and after looking into them, we found them to be quite left leaning, journals like Publishers Weekly and Kirkus reviews.

 

We read the library policy, and found that the policy said that if there was significant public interest, then the library would place a book. This must be why some of the conservative best sellers are upstairs in the adult section of the library.

 

We decided to start a petition to ask for Brave Books and Tuttle Twins Books to be placed in the libraries. Soon after we started the petition, however, I got an email from the library director saying she would accept Brave Books if they are donated. This was excellent news, since previously we were told donated books would not be accepted. We were also told that the library could not purchase the books directly because Brave Books are not sold by the library’s approved vendors.

 

I went to commissioners court the next week, and asked the court to make Brave Books and Tuttle Twins books approved vendors. I also mentioned that we would be crowd funding to raise funds for Brave Books to be placed, and I was very thankful for the opportunity to do this.

 

Imagine my surprise when our District Attorney, Mr. Brett Ligon, stood to make public comments next, and at the podium announced that he would like to fund Brave Books to be placed in the libraries! The next week, Cooper Bell, Head of Sales at Brave Books, contacted me to ask me to meet him at the courthouse. I learned that three of our very kind elected officials had split the cost of funding the Brave Books in our libraries, and Brave Books had given a very generous discount to help. We will be getting two copies of Saga 1 and Saga 2 in every library. Each saga has about ten books.

 

More information about Brave books is here: https://bravebooks.us/