Ban This Book

Ban This Book
by Alan Gratz
Recommended Ages: 10+

Amy Anne is frustrated at home because no one listens to her or respects her space. Her safe haven is her middle school library, but then a classmate's power-mom starts challenging books in that library and persuades the school board to yank them off the shelves – including Amy Anne's favorite book, From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. From her starting state as a quiet wallflower who is afraid to speak up at a school board meeting, Amy Anne grows into an activist hero who leads a schoolwide rebellion – mainly by starting a banned books lending library in her locker.

That's all you need to know to get a handle on what happens in this book. But even more important to know, it's a book that provokes serious thought, name-drops a lot of important books for kids that have all been banned somewhere at some time, stirs a rich range of emotions and, a couple of times in my own case, scored a big out-loud laugh. It's a joy to read and conjures a sympathetic example of the type of "good trouble" our society needs some people to make, sometimes. (It also finds a reason to quote that now famous saying about well-behaved girls never making history.) So, I'll cut this review short by saying, quite simply: Read this, and know it means you whether you represent the overprotective helicopter parent Amy Anne has to fight against or today's out-of-control cancel culture. Also try to read as many of the books named in it as you can.

Alan Gratz is an author from Tennessee whose other works include two Horatio Wilkes mysteries (Something Rotten, Something Wicked), three League of Seven books, Samurai Shortstop and several other baseball- and World War II-related novels that all may be interesting to young readers, and an installment in the "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" book series.