TV Star Kirk Cameron Pushes Books Promoting Christian Values to Kids

Cameron leads nationwide campaign against “woke libraries” beginning Aug. 5

By Michael Lovito, August 4, 2023

If there’s one area of American life where the conservative movement seems to be on the advance, it’s public education. Republican politicians and conservative activists have moved to ban books from school libraries that feature “objectionable material,” re-wrote curricula to reflect a more patriotic reading of American history and restricted how LGBTQ+ topics are discussed in the classroom. However, the success of these policies obscures the fact that many of them are more reactive than proactive, seeking to prevent exposing students to certain ideas rather than deliberately introducing them to ideas they deem suitable.

But a right-wing publisher and an Evangelical celebrity are determined to put conservatism and Christianity back on the offensive, starting by taking back the nation’s public libraries. Earlier this year, Brave Books and Kirk Cameron, the “Growing Pains” star turned social conservative icon, announced a nationwide campaign titled “See You at the Library,” which encourages parents to reserve space at their local libraries on August 5 so that they can read books that promote Christian values.

On one level, this is a clever marketing scheme to help Brave sell more books – parents who sign up for an event receive a free copy of a Brave book and get their event promoted on the publisher’s website. But “See You at the Library” is also seizing on a real desire among conservative parents who feel like they don’t see their ideas reflected in popular children’s literature. The event’s success or failure may serve as a litmus test as to whether or not these parents can be mobilized on a nationwide scale and galvanized into a larger political and social movement.

The Fight Against “Woke” Libraries

According to Brave Books’ website, the publisher was founded in 2021 by ophthalmologist Trent Talbot as way to arm “conservative parents with children’s books to enthrall their children with the values they need to thrive in today’s world.” Featuring anthropomorphic characters like Bongo the gorilla and Rebel the cheetah, each Brave book takes place on Freedom Island, which the books’ heroes defend from villains like Culture the vulture, who deceives other animals by “wrapping his lies with a small layer of truth,” and a malevolent pack of wolves who “desire all of the resources other animals work so hard for.”

So far, the publisher has attracted a wide range of conservative politicians and commenters as authors, including Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw (“Fame, Blame, and the Raft of Shame”), conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec (“The Island of Free Ice Cream”) and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn (“The Night the Snow Monster Attacked”). But perhaps their biggest star is Cameron, who has not only authored two books for Brave, but has also acted as something as a one-man promotional machine through his torrid press work on behalf of the publisher. Beginning in December 2022, Cameron embarked on the “Freedom Island Tour,” scheduling events at public libraries where he would read “As You Grow,” his first book for Brave, and “discuss the harmful effects of woke ideologies, specifically CRT and the transgender agenda.” While LGBTQ+ protest groups such as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence demonstrated against Cameron at readings in Seattle, Washington, DC, and Fayetteville, Arkansas, Cameron says that the outpouring of support for him and Brave Books has far outweighed the opposition they’ve encountered.

“We were surrounded and welcomed by the community of parents, who were loving that we were there,” Cameron told The Righting about the approximately 17 story hour events he held between December 2022 and July 2023.  “What we hear all the time is the same thing: ‘Thank you. Thank you for doing this. We feel smothered by the media and by the curriculums in the schools and special interest groups that seem to be so well funded, to push values that we don’t want for our communities or for our kids.”

But perhaps more noteworthy than the volume of protestors or supporters at Cameron’s story hours is the way that he and Brave have gone to war with public libraries. Both the author and his publisher claim that they have been rejected by 50 “woke” libraries, many of whom, they are keen to point out, have also hosted drag-queen story hours.

“We’ve got voice recordings and actual emails from the libraries saying ‘We’re not interested in your programming. We’re a queer friendly community and your values don’t align with ours,’” Cameron said. “I’m thinking to myself, which value doesn’t align? Love, compassion, gentleness, courage?”

Despite Cameron’s insistence that these libraries were trying to prevent him from making any kind of appearance, it is a little unclear what the places who rejected him were turning down. After Brave published an open letter to the Scarsdale, New York Public Library accusing them of stifling Cameron’s right to free speech, the library’s communications team released a statement of their own claiming that, while they had expressed disinterest in Cameron’s “program,” they forwarded him an application to reserve one of their meeting rooms at least twice, and that Brave had failed to complete the application on both occasions (Cameron would eventually host a story hour in Scarsdale in December 2022). Brave published a similar open letter addressed to the Indianapolis Public Library, who also said that while they turned down the opportunity to “promote or partner on” Cameron’s events, they never told him he couldn’t reserve one of their meeting rooms.

The spat between the two camps dragged on even after Cameron’s reading. While Cameron estimated during our conversation that there were approximately 3,000 attendees at his Indianapolis story hour (up from the 2,500 Brave announced shortly after the event in December), the library claimed that the head count was around 750. Even the conservative-friendly New York Post seized on this discrepancy, but Cameron insists that his number is correct.

“I speak in front of crowds at churches, at least twice a month, so I’m frequently in rooms that contain 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 people,” Cameron said. “So, I know what those crowd sizes look like. This was not 750 people by any stretch of the imagination, this was three or four times that.”

Neither the Scarsdale nor the Indianapolis Public Libraries responded to The Righting’s request for comment.

“A Spark that Lit a Grass Fire”

Despite these controversies, Brave and Cameron were encouraged enough by the response to the Freedom Island Tour to spin it off into “See You at the Library.” Inspired by “See You at the Pole,” an annual event in which Christian students gather and pray around public school flagpoles, “See You at the Library” is essentially one big call to action for parents to schedule story hours at their local public libraries, with the intent of reading a Brave book and hosting activities such as face painting, scavenger hunts and, if attendees are so moved, prayer.

“We’re giving families an opportunity to do what I’ve been doing for the last six months, which is to adopt a reading room and host a story hour, just like the drag queens have been doing and just like I’ve been doing, and invite your neighbors and engage with your community to start advancing the values that you want you kids to grow up with,” said Cameron, who estimates that approximately 250 libraries will be hosting a Brave story on or around the August 5. “It’s this idea of, let’s not be whiners about the bad culture, let’s be winners and bring it back to what we want it to be.”

As with Cameron’s earlier story hours, “See You at the Library” has been met with apparent resistance. In June, the American Library Association gave a presentation that seemed to provide librarians with advice on how to avoid scheduling Cameron-related events, prompting Cameron to request a federal investigation into the group.

But at least one public librarian will actually be hosting a Brave story hour. Kiara Tyrrell, a children’s librarian at the Somonauk Public Library in Illinois, scheduled a Brave story hour at her library in part because she reads the books to her children, but also because Brave books seem to be popular in her “small, conservative farming community.”

“Libraries, for the most part, stick to the same distributors of books,” Tyrell told The Righting in an email. She says that her library carries every Brave book, but also emphasized that they carry “LGBTQ books” as well. “While these publishers carry a wide variety of materials, it can be lacking and hard to find materials through these companies that service our more conservative patrons.”

While Cameron, who plans on visiting multiple story hours on August 5, was non-committal as to whether he plans to be directly involved with more “See You at the Library” events beyond 2023, he said that he hopes it will help encourage conservative parents to look for ways to disseminate their values beyond the traditional political process.

“The United States is not about electing a person to fix the problems from their chair in government,” Cameron said. “The Constitution begins with ‘We the people.’ And so real transformation and hope for the future begins with self-government, family, and community. So, what I want to see happen with “See You at the Library” is for me to just have been a spark that lit a grass fire that begins to spread across the country, of activated, engaged, passionate patriots and parents, politicians and pastors and principals of schools owning their responsibility to create the kind of world that they want for our future.”

Michael Lovito is a Brooklyn-based reporter and critic whose work has appeared in Salon, Brooklyn Magazine, Pavement Pieces, and The District. He also serves as editor-in-chief of the politics and pop culture website The Postrider.  @MLovito

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