what is power?

why are they so scared of stories?

Apr 08, 2025

This past week, I gave a mini-keynote to librarians, about book banning and hope and why we do what we do, even—or especially—in times that feel so dark.

Here’s what I wrote for librarians, teachers, parents, writers, readers, and everyone who loves books.

To those who share stories—

I had something planned to talk about, and I will get to that, but something happened in my personal life this past week, and I’d like to talk about that a little first.

As many of you know, several years ago, I wrote a book called When You Trap a Tiger, about a girl who loses her grandmother, or her halmoni. This past weekend, a theater in Minneapolis adapted the book into a play, and I flew up with my mom and sister to see the premiere.

What nobody there knew was that two weeks before the show, I lost my real life Halmoni.

If you love or have loved someone with dementia, you know that you spend many years saying goodbye. That the process of mourning is painful and long. And you also know what a gift those lucid days are.

The last day I spent with her, the final goodbye, was one of those lucid gifts, and one that I cherish. In some ways, it made the goodbye easier. In other ways, harder.

I was nervous to see the play. The timing felt too raw, and the story too personal. But seeing the actors bring the characters to life—and especially seeing the actress who played halmoni deliver lines I’d pulled from my own grandmother—felt like story reaching through time, telling me we were going to be okay. And being in that packed theater with my mom and sister, watching the play with families and students who laughed along with halmoni and cried along with the main character, Lily, I couldn’t help but feel the power of storytelling.

I couldn’t help but feel the way that stories reach through time and space, across age and culture. The way that stories connect us and continue to connect us. And when times feel especially hard, both societally and personally, I’m grateful to be reminded of that.

So thank you for letting me share a little.

Me with the cast of *When You Trap a Tiger*

Which brings me to what I originally planned to talk about. Because this is a hard time societally.

There’s so much to talk about, but we’re here to talk about stories and children’s books, and somehow, we who work in children’s books have found ourselves at the center of a culture war.

Somehow, those of us who have worked and trained for years to write and share stories, who have spent many of those years with little pay, doing this because we care deeply for the children we serve—somehow we are treated with suspicion and even disdain. Somehow, the stories we love are treated with fear and ire.

We know that so much of this backlash has to do with diversity, of course. A backlash to the idea that all people are deserving of love and support, that we belong to one another, that we should care for one another.

We know the book banning arguments about “sexual content” and DEI, and I could talk about how those arguments make no sense at all. I have talked about that.1 Many of us have. But sometimes I wonder if, in trying to rebuttal these arguments, I’ve let them frame the discussion too much.

I wonder if I’ve conceded, a little, the power of storytelling. Because there’s a reason book banners are so afraid of stories.

And if it’s not “sexual content”, and it’s not only diversity—then what is it?

When I try to answer this, first I think about change. Because stories are almost always about change. This is the hero’s journey: a character starts in one place and ends in the other, often changing their environment in the process.

This is good. Showing readers they can change not only themselves but also the world around them is one of the most impactful things we can do.

But the thing about change is that it’s threatening to those in power.

We live in difficult times, full of censorship and budget cuts and climate disasters and life that is becoming increasingly unlivable—and yet, there are people who are doing very, very well in this system. Those people want the world to stay the same.

And to those people, the only thing more threatening than change, is hope. Which is where children’s books come in. Because if stories are about change, then children’s stories are about change for the better.

There’s a piece of passed-down wisdom among children’s book authors. I heard from Kate DiCamillo, who heard it from Katherine Patterson2 – which is that children’s book authors are duty-bound to end with hope.

We write across so many age groups, across genres and subgenres, in verse and prose, fiction and non-fiction. There’s as much diversity in form as there is in our characters as there is in our readers. But the thing that unites all children’s books is that they center hope.

That hope comes from a belief in a better world. A belief that change is possible—and that all of us can be part of it. A belief that people are good, and that we are worth fighting for.

And it is a fight now, because book banning is a fight to control the narrative. If you can control the narrative, you can control history. If you can convince people that the reason life feels harder is because of diversity and equity and inclusion, because of librarians and authors and books, instead of ultra wealthy politicians and billionaires who refuse to prioritize our well-being—if you can convince people that change and community should be feared rather than embraced, then you can keep them from advocating for anything better.

So even though, as someone who writes stories, I sometimes feel uncomfortable talking about how important stories are, those who ban books know that it’s true.

They know a hopeless population is easier to control. They know that if we do not believe the world can change, if we do not believe we can play a part in that change, we will not take any action at all.

But we know that a hopeful population can change history. Hopeful people make the world a better place.

So I will keep writing toward hope.

I wrote my picture book about the history of solar energy not only because I think the history is really freaking cool but because I wanted to show kids just how many people have worked together across time and space to create something that helps humanity and the planet. I wanted them to understand that they could be part of that, too.

And I have a middle grade novel coming out next spring that I fully expect to be challenged. It’s about three kids in Seattle trying to cope with wildfire season, it’s about kids who ask, how do we live in a world on fire, both figuratively and literally. It’s a book that asks how we find hope amidst the crises of our time. And in this book, one of the characters sends a photo of herself in a bra to a boy in school, and the whole school has to deal with the fallout and the questions that come from it.

I knew when I started writing this book that it would be challenged. And I know from my experience with When You Trap a Tiger that these challenges greatly impact my career and my livelihood. But these are real problems that real kids are facing, and I want to write to tell them that they are not powerless in the face of these crises. I want to show them how they can help themselves and each other.

I am duty-bound to give them hope.

And I believe in that mission. I believe in stories because stories have power to reach across time and cultures to connect us. They have the power to build community, to build change, to build a better world.

And we have power, too.

Because even more than I believe in the power of stories, I believe in the power of people who share stories.

I believe in the power of people who share hope.

With care, as always,

Tae

My Books

My statement on the not-at-all “inappropriate content” in When You Trap a Tiger.

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