Mark your calendars for the 2025 "See You At The Library" (SYATL) event sponsored by Brave Books! Saturday, August 16 is the date, and the Brave Books website is geared to facilitate cities and local communities hosting their own story hours. As the site encourages:
This year, we are calling on patriots across the country to join the movement and go to their local library to host their own Story Hour. This is about more than just reading children’s books… It's about shaping the future of our nation by instilling traditional values and a love for America in the next generation. With your help, we can leave a legacy by fostering a sense of faith, hope, and patriotism in our country again.
SYATL is the brainchild of Christian actor, author, and producer Kirk Cameron and Brave Books CEO Trent Talbott. It began in 2023 as a grassroots event, but quickly became a national movement.
Individuals, families, and community organizations utilize their local libraries to host story hours that celebrate faith, family, and freedom by reading wholesome children's books and other uplifting or traditional literature, as well as practicing patriotic acts like the Pledge of Allegiance and singing songs and hymns.
The story hours often feature special guests who are either Brave Books authors themselves or cultural leaders and lightning rods. Swimmer and activist Riley Gaines, "Duck Dynasty Treasure" stars Jase and Missy Robertson, pastor and community activist John Amanchukwu, and Cameron himself have all participated in multiple SYATL events.
SYATL 2024 saw 360 story hours with over 10,000 participants in 46 of the 50 states. As of July, SYATL 2025 already has 100 story hours booked in 36 states across the U.S., and the goal is to have 500 story hours across all 50 states, with 50,000 people participating.
Cameron spoke with RedState on Tuesday about the way SYATL has shifted the cultural winds. In 2022, parents were fighting what appeared to be a difficult battle against Drag Queen story hours, and inappropriately sexualized materials in school curriculum and libraries. Fast forward to 2025: Not only is SYATL something that families and communities are excited to get behind, but the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of sanity and parental rights by allowing parents to opt their children out of school curriculum that does not align with their personal or religious values.
READ MORE: Supreme Court Upholds Right of Parents to Opt Their Kids Out of LGBTQ-Themed Classroom Activities
After three years, Cameron is still personally invested in being part of this pivotal movement and excited for what this year will bring.
He said:
SYATL has become precious to me, and this isn't just, "Hey, let's do it again this year!" We are actually witnessing phenomenal momentum and growth, not of a "Story Hour Protest," but a genuine movement of faith.
SYATL is not just about reading books: It's an opportunity that parents see to win back the culture in the public square. And we have to remember, that there is a war for the world that is going on right now, and it starts by winning the hearts and the minds of our children. And the other side is advancing their values every single day. Through Tiktok, through social media, Instagram, through the teachers at your kid's schools. Through movies, cartoons, music, television shows. And it's all happening on our watch as the family of faith. If we don't show up, if we don't stand up for our own values now, we won't have the freedom to live them later.
In other words, it is time for conservatives and patriots to ramp up, not rachet down. This is something the left never does: They are always dialed to 11 and as Cameron so aptly stated, advancing their values by any means necessary. Those who adhere to traditional and Christian values need to have that mindset of advancing, not retreating.
Cameron continued:
I want parents to understand that the public square belongs to us: the people, the family of faith. Not to the elites, the loud voices, and the rich. Our libraries, our schools, and our communities, they don't belong to activists. They do not belong to the purple-hair platoon. They belong to all of us as Americans. And when moms and dads and grandparents show up with truth, with love, and with conviction, we begin to reshape the narrative. And the story that we are telling is the story of reality, it's the story of history: HIS Story, God's story. That good will ultimately triumph over evil. And he will make every wrong right, he will punish every evil and he will reward the good. That's what our kids need to know and that is what SYATL offers as an opportunity for parents.
We asked Cameron whether SYATL would play a part in this Golden Age of America that President Donald Trump speaks about. Cameron spoke about the SYATL movement playing a part in national renewal not because it was borne through political actors or leanings, but because parents and grandparents dared to envision a clearer, better future for their children and were willing to make the sacrifice necessary to see it come about.
The coolest thing is that this isn't something that was funded by a political group, it's grassroots! It's totally led by the people: moms and dads like you and me, grandparents like us. And we are taking back the story hour, showing up with truth, love, and conviction, singing songs, praying to God, reading stories in the public square; and that is going to reshape the narrative.
It is reshaping the narrative and energizing families of every stripe. Just look at this line of waiting parents and children in, of all places, Scottsdale, AZ, a "purple" part of the country for SYATL 2024.
WATCH: [Note: the first 30 seconds of the video does not have sound.]
Not to mention the face of this young one at being able to read with Cameron at the 2024 SYATL event at Gum Springs Library in Loudoun County, VA.
Each year SYATL is mounted, it is a challenge to families and communities to engage in the culture and to have our voices heard in the public square. Presidential and political administrations will change and shift, but our traditional, conservative, and patriotic values should not shift with them.
The American Library Association Targets Brave Books 'See You At The Library Event'
Cameron concluded:
We are in the valley of decision: Do we think that it's primarily a political problem and so we need a political savior and we decide between the left or the right? I think, no. Many people try that, and it doesn't work. The choice is not between left and right, it's doing up or down. It's either up to God and the values of Heaven and maximum freedom under law for the honor and glory of God, and the blessing of our children, even if it costs us personally through sacrifice. Or, we take the easy road, and we go down to complacency, apathy, and dependence by letting other people with bigger ideas about the future shape the world and put us into bondage. That's the story of many nations. It's my prayer that is never the story of the United States of America.
Those library directors, and their overlords at the American Library Association, are probably kicking themselves for refusing to allow Cameron to book those story hours back in 2023. Kind of like that little tea kerfuffle in Boston over 250 years ago, Cameron's actions planted seeds, others are watering and tilling the ground, and SYATL is burgeoning and blossoming into a cultural revolution.