This article is the second installment of “Reading between the Lines,” a series about how independent Florida bookstores navigate an increasingly divided world. Part one can be read here.
Rayna Dunlop wasn’t allowed to read Harry Potter when she was growing up in Ormond Beach, Florida. The church she belonged to as a teenager believed that the books promoted witchcraft and were inappropriate for young adult readers. Now a mother of three, her bookstore, Fern & Fable Books, takes steps to ensure that other young people in her community don’t face the same barriers to accessing books.
Fern & Fable turned two years old in March, and while the shop may be little, Dunlop founded her store with the goal of creating an inclusive community space that hosts everything from craft nights to book clubs to release parties to late-night events partnered with local businesses.
“It’s amazing to me how much people want to come to things,” Dunlop said. “I’ll think, ‘Oh, is this too simple? Is this too silly?’ But people are really craving that in-person connection and being around like-minded people that love to read.”
Opening a bookstore had been in the back of Dunlop’s mind for most of her life. Her favorite movie growing up was You’ve Got Mail (1998), about two bookstore owners who are business rivals, but who unknowingly fall for each other after connecting anonymously on the internet. She described growing up in a “small, conservative homeschool group, and there were ways that our reading was pretty boxed-in.
“I had a pretty small worldview growing up, living in Florida my whole life in a very conservative town,” she continued. “And as I grew out of that and my life changed, reading really saved me in a lot of ways. … Becoming a parent really brought me back to the love of reading and helped me expand my worldview… and give me a bit more education than I was necessarily given.”
For three generations Dunlop’s family has lived in Ormond Beach, a beachside town in Volusia County on the east coast of Florida. Volusia County is also home to a robust chapter of Moms for Liberty, a conservative organization that primarily advocates against school instruction on race, LGBTQ+ rights and discrimination, and that has been classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an extremist hate group.
For the past few years, Volusia County’s Moms for Liberty chapter has challenged books in public schools under the claim that they contain “pornographic” material. Books with complaints filed against them have included Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and You Too? 25 voices share their #MeToo stories by Janet Gurtler. In February, one Moms for Liberty official lambasted two Volusia County high schools for promoting books on their social media channels that she claimed were “illegal,” and that the school staff were “groomers.”
Dunlop herself came into contact with local members of Moms for Liberty around the 2024 election season. A school board member up for reelection who had previously been endorsed by Fern & Fable returned to the shop to take promotional photos in support of literacy and reading banned books. This, says Dunlop, prompted a series of online attacks from Moms for Liberty, both on Fern & Fable’s social media pages and on the school board member’s page.
“It got particularly unsettling when comments were posted calling us pedophiles, saying we should be jailed for peddling porn to minors and a call to action on a local parenting group to not support our business,” Dunlop said.
The school board member who took photos at Dunlop’s shop was not reelected to the school board, and was instead replaced by a candidate “closely supported” by Moms for Liberty.
“The Wednesday morning after the election night, Fern & Fable was filled with people seeking solace and a safe place to process their feelings,” Dunlop continued. “At one point that morning the shop had a table full of women sharing tears, concerns, fear, anger and just overall trying to process. It was a powerful moment of solidarity and community.”
In an analytic report of books banned during the 2023 – 2024 school year conducted by PEN America, 4,218 unique titles were found to have been banned nationwide that year. Thirty-six percent of these books prominently featured characters or people of color. Twenty-five percent featured LGBTQ+ characters or people and 10% featured neurodivergent or disabled characters or people. Additionally, 53% of these banned books were written for young adults and 32% were written for adult readers.
“Young adult titles often serve as the bridge to adult books, building upon teenagers’ critical thinking skills through engaging stories,” the report claims. And later in the report this question is raised: “When so many young adult, young reader and classic novels are banned, is it believable that these removals are simply about what is ‘age appropriate’?”
Like Dunlop, her three children are growing up in Ormond Beach. All three are enrolled in public school—one in seventh grade, one in fifth grade and one in third grade. Dunlop said the educational environment in Volusia County and the ongoing attempts to ban books in Florida have been the impetus for Fern & Fable’s existence.
“How do we raise our children where we feel very disconnected, and is it making the best choice for them to be in our public school system?” Dunlop asked. “If my kids are going to grow up living in Ormond Beach, I want them to have a place where they can be, and they can read, and they can be whoever they want to be.”
Dunlop says that her shop has also attracted criticism from Moms for Liberty members for hosting a Little Free Library near Fern & Fable’s entrance that specifically carries banned books. A Little Free Library is a small mailbox-like stand with books that passersby are encouraged to take for free, and to leave behind their own books for others. Members of the community can pay Fern & Fable Books a flat fee to cover the wholesale cost of the stock in the Little Free Library, which Dunlop says is often frequented by families with children and is regularly depleted.
Dunlop added that the best ways to support Fern & Fable Books is by checking out their social media and their Bonfire storefront, where they sell clothes with slogans such as “Rebels Read Banned Books,” “Books Are Not Dangerous, Ignorance Is” and “I Sponsored a Banned Book at Fern & Fable and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.” Every item sold equals one book added to the Little Free Library.
Rayna Dunlop’s Book Recommendations
Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies and the Truths We Use to Win by Jessica Valenti is an examination of post-Roe America, and a deep-dive on recent legislation and misinformation on healthcare and abortion rights in the United States.
“She said something in her book where someone said, ‘Do you feel like you’re just preaching to the choir?’” Dunlop said, referring to Valenti. “And she said, ‘I feel like I am rallying my choir.’ And I really felt that. Whatever your issue is, sometimes I can feel like, are we being a bit too insulated in our bubble here? Am I just preaching to the choir? But no, we’re rallying the choir to be able to go out into the world and I was very encouraged by that.”
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield is a science fiction and suspense thriller novel about a marine biologist who returns from a deep-sea voyage dramatically changed, barely eating and seemingly in a trance, haunted by what she encountered in the briny depths. It’s up to her wife to solve the mystery of what exactly happened to her…and what she brought back with her to the surface.
