Moms For Liberty Published Their First Book
And the America First and America Best group used a Russian illustrator for it.
I want nothing more than to write about paternalism and its close friend fascism, following the news that some Kootenai County, Idaho, public library board members have literally stated they know better than parents on how to raise kids (see here) and the news that Utah legislators are not just banning books statewide–we knew that and saw the 15th title officially added to the list this week–but that that ban also means public school students cannot bring their own personal copies of those banned books onto school grounds. Here’s the thing, though: those are pretty well tread topics at this point. We are seeing the germination of seeds planted back in early 2021. What many folks claimed was hysteria back then is now reality.
So instead, let’s take a look at one of the big projects Moms For Liberty took on in 2024 and that, well, you likely haven’t heard a thing about because it has not been the knockout project they thought it would be.
In 2024 Moms For Liberty published their first book as an organization. Libby Justice Goes to Williamsburg released November 14, 2024.
This picture book is intended for readers age 4-10 and follows a 10-year-old Libby Justice as she and her family visit the historical town of Williamsburg. Libby, much as she’s enjoying the trip with her family, is worried about the future of her local playground, which has gone into disrepair. She doesn’t want it torn down, but she’s too scared to speak up at city council. It’s through inspiration in Williamsburg and historical figures that she finds the courage inside her to try to save the park. As the official blurb promises “Join Libby and her historical mentors as they explore how courageous speech is even more important when others disagree.”
If you know even the tiniest bit about how books work, you are likely thinking to yourself what book is as appropriate for a 4-year-old as it is a 10-year-old. What 4-year-old is interested in a story depicting a 10-year-old traveling to Williamsburg and showing up at city council meetings? What 10-year-old is eager to read a book also being marketed to 4-year-olds?
That’s one of the points, of course.
Moms For Liberty has zero idea how writing and selling books works, and that’s evident simply through their inability to understand how literacy or child interest in books works. But those are pretty boring details to care about when your group’s identity is built upon knowing what’s best for every child. Recall that two prominent members of Moms’s Hernando County, Florida, chapter put out their own age- and content- confused picture book last year, too, thinking it was going to be some kind of phenomenon with the children.
Libby Justice showcases “pro-American history,” alongside “historic American heroes you probably know—and some you probably don’t” who teach her timeless values. Whose “timeless” values isn’t articulated, but we all know precisely what and who those values belong to: cishet, able bodied, Christian white folks. (Don’t worry–Libby does get mentored by a historical formerly enslaved Black man in the book, Gowan Pamphlet, whose strong Christian faith is probably why he was allowed in the club).#
It also features some of the most stilted and unrealistic dialog between a 10-year-old and her younger brother.
The book is being sold through the Moms For Liberty Foundation, the fundraising arm of the organization. Moms For Libraries, the label used to identify where the book came from on the back cover, is an arm of their Foundation; it’s one I clocked as propaganda three years ago when it was announced.
The goal of Moms For Libraries is getting conservative propaganda into school and public libraries. Just take a look at their slate of literacy partners:
It’s not surprising to see how Moms For Liberty is promoting their book on their website, though one thing that stands out is that the group isn’t necessarily hoping that “Liberty Minded” parents and grandparents buy it for their kids. They want this book to land in public schools, where the group’s propaganda can impact kids directly. Given how hard Moms For Liberty has harassed and beleaguered professionals in the positions of authority and expertise when it comes to what books are available in schools, well, they’ve found a nice way to compromise, haven’t they? We will stop trying to ban books that we claim you’re using to groom and indoctrinate children–because those books feature real history and real facts–if you let us put our books in the schools. Balance.
Or, more accurately, neutrality.
One of the biggest hurdles in ending book censorship isn’t from the outside. It’s from the insistence that libraries are neutral and don’t need to put a foot down on the side of facts and accuracy. Decades of parroting the idea that libraries are neutral has only aided in putting libraries in the position to now have to eat the slop presented by groups like Moms For Liberty whose goal is to destroy public institutions of democracy. Whose goal is to actually indoctrinate young people with one perspective on the world–the perspective of a world like the manufactured, whitewashed one of Williamsburg.^
Libby has her own Instagram account, which prominently features the blurbs for the book from children’s literature experts Megyn Kelly and Glenn Beck.
Libby Justice was illustrated by Olga Lee. Lee, interestingly, isn’t an American. She’s Russian. While she cannot and should not necessarily be faulted for taking an illustration job, especially because she might have no idea who Moms For Liberty is and/or may have no context for the story itself, it is fascinating that a group so pro-America sought a non-American to do the work for the book.
Without the book on hand, it’s unclear who published the item. It’s likely a vanity press–common–but whether or not it was produced in America is certainly worth knowing, given the rhetoric this group champions.
There has been surprisingly little fanfare about the book’s release, even within the organization. What successes have they seen ramming the book into schools so far? We don’t know because they haven’t celebrated anything about that quite yet. What we do know is this: the group claims that in 2024 they donated 1,000 children’s books to public schools. This number differs significantly from their 2023 tax filings, which indicates a book donation campaign of a whopping 320 books. We won’t know if they are telling the truth about 2024’s donations until the end of 2025 when their 990s are available. But for a group claiming they’re about literacy initiatives, even the donation of 1,000 books is not that many books given how big and widespread their membership is.+
Here’s a fun twist, though. If you want a primer on how to profit off your own product and expand your mission of actually indoctrinating young readers, look no further than the Moms For Liberty chapter in Brevard County, Florida–home base chapter of the organization. Not only do they want to ensure that Libby is in every elementary school county-wide, expertise, appropriateness, and interest be damned, they’re doing it through a Christian fundraising platform. It will apparently cost $2,000 to furnish the book in every county elementary school.&
The publication of the first Moms For Liberty book will likely determine where and how the group chooses to further pursue books as a medium for their message. If going solo isn’t working out, it isn’t beyond imagination that they’ll utilize the tools of their literacy partners who, despite being as poorly done as Libby, have better distribution models since they’ve got at least some experience in the industry.
This isn’t the only new activity by Moms For Liberty that you may not be familiar with. Another one of their recent initiatives is M4LU, an online university helping to train people in the ways of right-wing conspiratorial politics. You’re welcome to dig around what their plans are with this, but the thing that stands out to me is their eagerness to circle around and further champion Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation. It’s a book too many have uncritically read and applied hook, line, and sinker. It’s also a book with no actual research behind it, from a writer with no background in young people or young people’s development, but who has previously wrung his hands over young people and the growth of social emotional learning (bonus points for being about campus free speech, a perennially popular right wing “concern”). The fact this story out of Australia about Haidt paying off researchers has hardly made a splash in the US tells you how deep this book has captured readers. As the Michael Hobbs and Peter Shamshiri, podcasters of If Books Can Kill explain, adults been taken by having a print book that makes them feel good about the hunch they have about phones being the reason today’s kids are so anxious. Whether or not the book is founded in any evidence doesn’t matter. It’s a book and that’s proof enough.
As adults in America, we want an easy solution to a generations-long problem of a dangerous, dwindling future for young people. But when your solution is the same one being championed by Moms For Liberty, is that be enough to wake up and be a little more critical about the situation?
It’s not the phones.
It’s the fact there is no viable future for kids who are growing up under ever-expanding fascism–it’s not new this year!–as well as educational opportunities that are continually being reevaluated and shrunk in the name of austerity and “getting back to basics.”
Let us remember that this is the information Moms For Liberty and their ilk continue to prop up as why they care so deeply about youth literacy:
Without context, those numbers are startling, aren’t they? But the organization doesn’t bother telling you the information related to 4th grade reading levels is a long-time lie passed through right-wing circles without actual truth behind it. Know what helps “juvenile offenders” read? Having access to a wide variety of books in their school and public libraries, as well as access to books in their home. And if those “juvenile offenders” are experiencing incarceration? The solution is ensuring that the worst purveyors of censorship–American’s prison industrial complex–changes their policies because of the long piles of research that show access to books and libraries and literacy in jail reduces recidivism.*
In a society trained and hellbent on consumerism and the purchasing of a solution, that solution is not only Haidt’s book. It’s also Moms for Liberty’s M4LU and their handy little story about Libby Justice constructing an American history that never was.
They’re banking on that so-called adult functional illiteracy to continue pushing their lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Notes
#Libby Justice comes with a free audiobook, so you can check out the moment Gowan inspires Libby with his own story. The eyes here are terrifying.
^Did you know that Moms For Liberty’s buddies at The Heritage Foundation–folks behind Project 2025, too–believe that contemporary Colonial Williamsburg is too woke?
+It does only take 10 “liberty minded” people to open a chapter, per their own documents. So even if they have as many chapters as they claim, those groups might not be very big. Interestingly, at least one in Illinois has disappeared all together and it’s certainly not the only one that’s left the organization.
&The book is $22 a pop, if you’re curious.
*If you’re thinking “wow, didn’t you once write about the trials over comic books in the 1950s and how there was a moral panic about how comics led to increased juvenile delinquency and that moral panic was helped by a book of lies by Frederic Wertham, an ‘expert?’” Yes, I did. Cultural warriors offer absolutely nothing new or interesting. It’s just a slate of new white folks at the forefront.