Architects Of Access

The story of Black children’s books isn’t only written by authors and illustrators. It’s also built by librarians doing the quiet, stubborn work of making stories reachable. We sit down with Deborah Taylor, a widely respected advocate who spent more than 44 years at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, shaping teen services, school partnerships, and the national conversations that influence what gets recognized, purchased, and placed in young hands.

Deborah takes us back to the late 60s and early 70s, when books for Black teens were scarce and stories reflecting urban life were even harder to find. She explains how librarians responded to that gap with programming, creative collection building, and a clear belief that information is power. We dig into a practical tension libraries still face today: how to keep collections fully integrated while also making it easy for a parent or teen to walk in and quickly find books that feel like mirrors instead of obstacles.

We also explore libraries as part of community wellness, where curated reading supports mind, body, and spirit for families under stress. Deborah breaks down how awards and committees help change the ecosystem, why the expansion into joy, fantasy, mystery, and speculative fiction matters for Black childhood, and what it feels like when a room full of kids turns pages together during a citywide reading program. Finally, she names the current backlash and book banning pressure for what it is and what it demands next: vigilance and coalition.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

When we talk about the history of black children's books, we often focus on the writers, the illustrators, and the publishers, the visible names on book jackets. But behind every book a child discovers, behind every shelf that quietly shifts toward inclusion, there are librarians. Black librarians who have spent decades designing access where there were gaps. Today we're talking with someone who helped build those pathways, one of the field's most respected advocates, Deborah Taylor. Deborah Taylor spent more than 44 years at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, shaping teen services, school partnerships, and national committees that influence which books get recognized and purchased. Her work is a blueprint for what it means to be an architect of access.

Deborah Taylor’s Career And Mission

Serving Black Teens With Few Books

SPEAKER_01 0:52

My name is Deborah Taylor. For 44 years plus, I worked at the Enoch Pratt Free Library before I retired. And for most of that time, my work was with young adults, teenagers. But I also headed up for about 20 years our Office of School and Student Services, which was our connection to schools, public, private, homeschoolers, all of the aspects of education. So that kind of gave me a K-12 focus in addition to my primary focus being teenagers.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

When Deborah began her career, there were very few books available for black youth. The shelves held only a handful of stories, and almost none reflected the real lives of young people walking through the library doors. Deborah explains what that period felt like and how limited the tools truly were.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

No, there were not very many. We were starting to see a few more books. And we were also using some books from the adult collection that would resonate with teens, but the pickings were very slim. And there were very few books that spoke to, especially the urban experience, that many of our young people were walking in the door. I think we were we had this kind of period where we were trying to reach the kids in our communities, but we had very few tools to reach them. And so we used our programming, we used encouragement of them, we used opportunities for them to use other materials as ways to try and encourage them to be library users. I think we knew that information was power. I mean, that was we were come, it was the late 60s, early 70s. So information as power was what we were really working with. And we wanted young people to be informed. We wanted them to be informed about their rights. We wanted them to be informed about their opportunities. So we really, that was the really the hook. But we did not have a lot of books with them, with their experiences. We tried to use the few that we had effectively, but we were, you know, we had very limited tools.

Displays Versus Integrated Shelves

SPEAKER_00 3:19

So librarians improvised. With hardly any tools, they built spaces for black teens anyway, shaping literacy through programming, advocacy, and whatever stories they could find. One of the most powerful threads in Deborah's story is the invisible labor. Librarians weren't just shelving books, they were strategizing around scarcity, designing displays, curating collections, helping families find stories that spoke to them.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

You know, that was a question that we always talked about a lot in libraries. You know, most of us were trained as librarians, so we're trained to categorize the books by where the books go. That's not the way the public comes into the library, and that's not the way the public uses our collections. They want to know where are the books that I'm interested in. If I'm interested in African American books, and finally I can I can read books about my life and my story, where are they? I don't want to have to plow through everything else. So we would use displays, we would use ways of highlighting the books, but also making sure that they would be integrated as a regular part of the collection. So you're always torn between how do you market it for the walk-in public, looking for that story, and make sure that you maintain the integrity of your collection, which is a fully integrated collection, and books are, you know, where they're supposed to be by their categories.

Libraries As Community Health Spaces

SPEAKER_00 4:47

For families rushing in after work, trying to grab books before dinner and homework and bedtime routines, visibility mattered. These displays weren't decorative, they were interventions, acts of cultural navigation, making sure black children could see themselves reflected. One of the most moving parts of Deborah's interview is how she describes libraries as places of health, spaces where literacy supports mind, body, and spirit.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

Oh, absolutely. It's so important because I think that especially when people are stressed and you know, being working class and being low income in this country is so stressful. Um, and especially, you know, if somebody gets sick and they're at the doctor's office or just making the regular appointments. Um to have this kind of connection to when you go home, especially if the young person is sick, or you know, this is something to think about or to follow up on, and if they're they're really good curated collections of books that speak to that particular child or that environment or encouraging that child in that environment. I think it makes a big imp, a big impact on the child's mental health, the family connection, this idea that, you know, set it's putting the seed in there that you're also a part of their education. Um, you're not, you know, just someone on the outside looking in when they go to school. I think that's a tremendous, has the opportunity to be a tremendous impact on a healthy experience because we know we're we're mind, body, and spirit, you know, and all of these things need to work together.

Awards And Advocacy Change Access

SPEAKER_00 6:27

In that lens, librarians become part of a community wellness network. They're providing comfort, reducing stress, sending families home with stories that nurture connection. Access isn't accidental. Someone has to push for it at national tables, award committees, professional associations, and publishing discussions. Deborah was one of those advocates.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

I think it's still all of those factors. Um I think as uh I think some of the committees, particularly like uh the Coretta Scott King Book Awards, Pure Belprey for Latino uh books, I think all of those areas, they have been, those awards were also ways of advocating. They were ways of bringing books to the forefront, and then writers and illustrators to the forefront. And they, I think they contributed a lot. I also think the efforts from ALA in general and in the children's and young adult divisions to deal more with equity and to deal more with the changing demographic also contributed to it as well.

Expanding Genres In Black Youth Books

SPEAKER_00 7:33

Awards change the ecosystem. When a book wins a medal, libraries buy more copies, schools add to reading lists, and children get access. Behind every award-winning black children's book is a committee that fought for its visibility, often led by librarians like Deborah. Deborah witnessed and helped shape the expansion of what black children's literature could be. Not just history, not just struggle, but joy, fantasy, adventure, speculative fiction, and everyday stories of black childhood. This too is access, not just to shells, but to whole imaginative worlds.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

I think another big change to me has been the growth of the genre. Um, you know, for a while you had historical books for about the African-American experience. There were so many books about the rural or the, you know, the downtrodden, so to speak. There were very few books about black kids just going about their lives, doing what all kids do, but having that experience through the lens of having grown up in the black community. We're seeing more of that. We're seeing more books of fantasy. We're actually seeing more fantasy that's drawing from the African experience. Um, when you think about a book like Children of Blood and Bone, which you know which grew from Nigerian uh stories. So we're seeing more of that. Um, we're seeing more mysteries which reflect what that whole experience is like. So having a full range is really one of the changes, not just one or two types of stories being told over and over again.

Teen Identity And One Book Programs

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Deborah's passion for teens is unmistakable. She understood that adolescence is a time of identity, creativity, and discovery, and that books can help shape who young people believe they can be. This is another kind of architecture, building confidence, agency, and imagination.

Censorship Backlash And Staying Vigilant

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Oh, I think it's so important. The library did a number of programs that were focused on that age group in particular. And right now they're doing a one book, Baltimore, where all seventh and eighth graders get to get a copy and get to read the same book. And they bring in the writer and they do programming and they encourage the whole community to read the book, not just the kids themselves, but adults and you know, parents and teachers, and anyone who works with kids and is interested in you know keeping kids safe. And um, so even before that project, which is going on now, we would we had a uh one book, um, Baltimore, that we did, and we would bring in writers. I remember being in Central Hall with maybe about 500 kids, you know, chairs all the way to the back, and Christopher Paul Curtis reading The Watsons Go to Birmingham, and all the kids had their copy. And you could hear the pages turn together. It was such a powerful moment because they were, they were, he he was funny, and the the characters was a strong black family. Um, they were taking a trip south, which some of the kids could relate to because they'd had that experience, or their parents had told them about those experiences. So we, you know, there was a way to tell the to connect with them around those stories. Um, but I also know that um black kids like, I mean, they go to all the superhero movies. I mean, there was a reason the Black Panther resonated with so many, not just black kids, but across ages. They wanted to see the superheroes. So making sure that you have, you look for those books and you have those books and you make those available. Um, I know so many adults who said when they were teenagers, black adults, they loved Lord of the Lord of the Rings series. You're finding stories that resonate like those, that is critical for adolescents. Um, and also finding the things that kids are interested in. Are you interested in cheerleading? Do you want to write your own rap music? Um, not just stories, but also do you want to create? You know, that's the time of life where you're figuring out who you are, what you like, what's what what you know what floats your boat, as they say. You want to figure that out. And so having books that reflect all of that. Do you want to be a fashion designer? Do you want to draw comics? So making sure that all of those things are part of an adolescent's experience and not just this narrow idea that if you've only if you're reading fiction are you engaging with text.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

The progress Deborah helped field is not secure. It's threatened by organized censorship and political backlash. Deborah calls this moment what it is: a period of retrenchment, one that requires vigilance. She reminds us that progress in America has never been a straight line. But librarians have always been defenders of access and they continue to carry that work forward.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

What do I think is next? Oh, that's a really good question. Um I think what is next is we will continue to see um pressure from um various communities. Now we're seeing the backlash. You get a um you get people banning a book like New Kid, which has got to be the most innocuous um book about a kid, you know, a black kid in a primarily white school telling, writing about his experiences. We're starting to see the backlash. And so I think what we're gonna have to, what we should see next, what we need is for people to be vigilant. Um we need for people to be kind of figuring out ways to coalesce, making sure that these books, the little bit of progress we made, it's not turned back.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

Deborah Taylor's career is a testament to what it takes to build a literacy ecosystem where black children can thrive. The story of black children's books isn't just about who writes them, it's about who protects them, who displays them, who advocates for them, and who makes sure children can actually find them. Librarians are the architects of access, and because of their work, generations of black children have found mirrors, windows, and entire worlds waiting for them in the pages. Thank you for listening to Reading in Black, a celebration of our stories, our histories, and the power of the page.