Bruce Ravid (’74 BBA)

For the Sake of Freedom

Many teachers experience challenges to books and attempts at book censorship. When Ginny Moore Kruse ('76 MLS), was a new teacher she faced this issue several times. "They didn't hit the headlines, but were quite memorable and unexpected," she recalls. Ginny was able to do something for other teachers in similar situations during her 26-year career as director of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC), a special purpose library of the UW School of Education.

"During my first weeks at the CCBC in 1976, I realized this nationally unique research library had what was, even then, amazingly vast print resources about children's and young adult literature. I remember thinking to myself 'if only I had some of this information at my fingertips when I was trying to defend the teaching or the ordering of a book.' There's no other library like it in the country."

In 1978, with the support of other faculty and a grant from the Evjue Foundation, Ginny and professor emerita Dianne M. Hopkins ('81 PhD), developed the basic structure of CCBC Intellectual Freedom Information Services, which remains essentially the same today. Wisconsin teachers and librarians faced with a book complaint can contact the CCBC for confidential, unbiased information about the book in question.

Even after retiring in 2002, Ginny is still contributing to the work she began. Her gift to establish the Ginny Moore Kruse Intellectual Freedom Fund will make it possible for the CCBC to expand its current intellectual freedom information services; to respond to campus requests to lecture and help integrate intellectual freedom topics into curricula; to make presentations to school districts, library systems, state and national organizations; to assist out-of-state institutions with setting up similar services; and to support research.

The CCBC is a leader in the ever-widening intellectual freedom community across the nation thanks to the work of Ginny and her colleagues. It has become a model for institutions in other regions and states and has earned numerous awards. Ginny continues to speak and write about intellectual freedom issues and children's literature and is involved in the leadership of a statewide intellectual freedom network of educators, attorneys, librarians, journalists and others committed to civil liberties.

"Children's and young adult literature is a compelling and ever-changing composite of exciting books from babies through young teenagers," she said. "There are more opportunities for children and their families to see and own books, and that’s marvelous. There also are more questions as to the nature of excellence. If there is an intellectual freedom issue in Wisconsin for a teacher, school library media specialist or public librarian, the CCBC Intellectual Freedom Information Services can help."