Stand with Teresa Against Censorship

As many of you know, I am returning to teaching full-time, and so I will no longer be working at Village Books part-time. I’m going to miss working at the bookshop and especially with Village Books owner Teresa Kenney, as we have become best friends over the years. Since we opened, Teresa has not taken a salary, and yet she pays me a living wage. She has poured her own savings into the business because she absolutely loves what she does. Last year, she founded a nonprofit, Reading Is Revolutionary, to branch off her community work from her business work and in one year’s time, has donated more than 600 books to kids in need, founded a free picture book festival that was a huge success, advocated for access to books, fought book censorship, and created programming around storytelling and self-empowerment. She also agreed to host The Woodlands Pride Lending Library for free in the bookshop to support diverse voices and issues—the same voices and issues that are being erased in school and public libraries across the country. We live in a county that has taken the lead in book banning in Texas, so she has been attacked online and in public meetings because of it. She has been yelled at in her store. She could just keep her head down and run her business selling books, but she continues fighting for the freedom to read because she knows it’s the right thing to do.

Every time she comes up with an idea for making an impact in the community around books (she wants to do a free book fair for children aging out of foster care, for example), she reaches out for donations to help support it. Sometimes she uses her own money if she can’t reach her goal. So before I leave Village Books, I want to do a huge fundraising push for her nonprofit, so that she can continue to do the work she loves and is so needed right now.

Please help me help Teresa and Reading Is Revolutionary continue to expand their efforts in our community and beyond. Reading Is Revolutionary is a 501(c)(3) organization and all donations are tax deductible.