by Rebekka Klingshirn, Heidelberg IWC
Ban this Book, by Alan Gratz, is a story about empowerment and coming of age through education. When protagonist Amy Anne finds out that her favorite book (as well as several others) has been banned from her elementary school library, she starts finding her voice. Devastated that it has been taken off the shelf, Amy Anne tries to find solace in her family, but being the oldest sibling, she is up against busy parents who expect her behave like a grown-up, two wild dogs and two sisters who are all over her space. With no room for herself at her home, the library became her safe space.
Amy Anne and two of her friends start to acquire banned books for a secret locker library and eventually find a way of getting them reinstalled in the school’s library.
Over the course of the story, Amy Anne really needs to get “out of her head” – and so she does: while at the beginning of the story she wishes she would (or could?!) say all the things that are on her mind, she learns many things through building a secret library with her best friends. But the most important lesson is that she has friends she can rely on, she has parents she can talk to about everything and she has a voice she can use to make herself heard.
While this is obviously a book for children / teenagers, the topic is one that is important on many levels for adult readers as well. As the current banning of books has reached an almost ridiculous level in the US, it is reassuring to know that children – our future – are not powerless when things get difficult.
