The Associated Press asked DeSantis’ office for examples of liberal activists abusing the law and it provided one: Chaz Stevens, a South Florida resident who has often lampooned government. Stevens raised challenges in dozens of school districts over the Bible, dictionaries and thesauruses.

In the end, it turnsout that this legend was also true and the accepted history was in fact a false account,manipulated by a former Hogwarts headmaster to save his own reputation. I read thisas an affirmation of the potential of fictional stories—and particularly children’s stories,folklore and fairy tales—to transmit knowledge without necessarily claiming to holdthe absolute truth as other types of narratives masquerading as history or fact do.

BROOKE GLADSTONE In the Tennessee State Assembly last April, Representative Jerry Sexton took on this question.   [CLIP]   JERRY SEXTON Let's say you take these books out of the library. What are you going to do with them? You can put them on the street, let them on fire.    JERRY SEXTON I don't have a clue, but I would burn them.

Every bit of new information fills in the blanks of a time that has long since passed out of living memory.

Books can indeed be dangerous. Until “Close Quarters,” I believed stories had the power to save me. That novel taught me that stories also had the power to destroy me. I was driven to become a writer because of the complex power of stories. They are not inert tools of pedagogy. They are mind-changing, world-changing.