Pages

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Ban This Book by Alan Gratz 255 pages

This book is a love letter to librarians.  When a parent railroads the school board into removing several titles, including her very favorite book, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, from her school library's shelves, Amy Anne decides she needs to stand up for what she knows is right.  The problem is that standing up and speaking up about anything at all are not what Amy Anne ever does.  What's a girl to do?  How about get the banned titles and make them available to all her schoolmates through her undercover locker library?  The reason I say this is a love letter to librarians is that you have kids getting fired up over reading, over their right to read the books they want to read.  The best part is that all the titles mentioned in this book have been challenged or banned from US libraries at some point in the last 30 years.  Seeing the titles in the story, reading about other kids clamoring to get their hands on them to find out why they would be banned, is likely going to reignite interest in some of my favorite books of all time.  I love this book so much!  I will definitely recommend it to kids reading at a 3rd grade level and up, students of children's literature, teachers, other librarians, parents...basically anyone who will sit still long enough for me to gush about it. 

No comments:

Post a Comment