My grandmother was a librarian and schoolteacher. She loved books. My parents also loved reading, and our house had walls covered with bookshelves and books of all kinds. From the time I could read, I visited the local library regularly. It was a wonderful building—an old Victorian house with bay window seats, fireplaces, and rooms filled with books for all ages: children, young adults, and adults. Worlds opened up to me as I read my way through book after book. There was a freedom in that experience, an opportunity to travel to other times, other places. To expand habitual ways of seeing. Books can change your life. It did mine, and it continues to do so.

A well-written book can take you beyond your usual mental meanderings to locations and thoughts heretofore unseen or considered. It awakens the senses and touches the heart. It leaves you breathless with delight or tearful with empathy. It can engender gratitude for a world full of so many unique individuals and experiences. Such books open a door and welcome you inside, freely.

And this freedom is what is now endangered in the U.S. as books deemed a threat to more conservative belief systems are banned in state after state. Classic books such as Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and The Diary of Anne Frank. Even Charlotte’s Web. When the realm of “acceptable” beliefs constricts to one narrow perspective, freedom vanishes. Both children and adults lose the ability to wander the world in wonder and joy through the pages of diverse authors’ books.

Yet hope is not completely lost. It lives in the libraries and independent bookstores across the country that continue to carry and advocate for books that have been banned. When Anne and I moved to a new community in the Boston area recently, we were heartened to see an in-depth informational exhibit at the local library on book banning. An extensive history of banning books in the world was displayed along with book covers, including African American, feminist, and LGBTQ authors. The library encourages patrons to read these books with an open mind in order to experience varied lives and viewpoints. This is what freedom looks like.

Books are the common denominator of basic human rights. So many people have spoken about the importance of reading. Oprah Winfrey says books changed her life when she was growing up; as an adult, she created a book club to offer that experience to other readers. Cancer survivor Mark Nepo writes how reading others’ writing, poetry or prose, gives us “the strength to go on.”

My own life would have been very different without books and the life possibilities I saw in them (like becoming a writer myself). I traveled the world, in imagination and then in reality, because of experiences I first had through reading. I learned of the challenges and struggles of others through reading about their lives and often hidden historical events. Books not only offer freedom to the mind and body, but they also give the soul freedom to soar. To me, this is the essence of life on Earth.