Three years ago, after a difficult state legislative session in Texas marked by efforts to restrict access to books and disparage the work of librarians, I recognized the urgency of helping my community understand how our libraries operate. I am a school librarian. My community supports the school library, and students are active library users. At the same time, rhetoric from that legislative session and in the years since have shown me that the public has limited knowledge about how we choose books and select programming to make the library a place students want to be. So in 2023, I created the Freedom Walk, an interactive program that takes place in the courtyard of my high school campus. Students visit during lunch periods to learn about their rights as readers. Instead of simply highlighting censorship statistics or bringing awareness to banned books, the Freedom Walk explores the ideas behind our freedom to read and the critical role students and the public can play in protecting that freedom.…