Ban This Book

by Alan Gratz

  I marched toward Angelina’s room with my armful of books.

  “No! No! That’s my room! You can’t!” Angelina screamed.

  Mom stuck her head in the room. “Girls, please. I’m on the phone with work.”

  Angelina wrapped herself around my leg. “Amy Anne took my fence, and now she’s going in my room!” she wailed.

  “Amy Anne, I need you to be the mature one here,” Mom said.

  “But—”

  Mom mean-frowned at me. “Fix this,” she said, and went back to her phone call.

  So I had to give Alexis’s CD back, but Angelina didn’t have to give me my books back? How fair was that? And Mom didn’t understand why I wanted to run away.

  I turned away from Angelina’s room and shoved the books back at her. “Here. And if you bend any of the pages or covers, you’re a dead horsey. Understand?”

  “Pony,” Angelina said, arranging the books back into a fence.

  “Amy Anne?” Dad called. “I thought I asked you to keep these dogs out of the kitchen! They’re licking the floor again!”

  I drooped. The dogs had slipped away from me while I was arguing with Angelina.

  “Flotsam! Jetsam! Come!” I yelled.

  In the hall, Mom put a finger to her other ear and frowned. “I’m sorry, can you say that again?”

  I led the dogs into the bathroom and shut the door. It was the only place left where I could get away from everyone. I sat down on the closed toilet seat with a huff and pulled Jet and Flot to me, hugging them. They were the only ones who ever really listened to me. With everybody else, I’d just stopped trying.

  “I don’t suppose you guys have found a magical rabbit hole I can fall down or dug up an enchanted amulet in the backyard that leads to another world, have you?”

  Flotsam and Jetsam licked my face and wagged their stubby tails, which I took as a no.

  “At least we can hide out in here until dinner,” I told them.

  The door rattled. “Mom! Mom!” Alexis yelled. “Amy Anne is hogging the bathroom and I have to pee!”

  It Speaks

  At dinner, Alexis twirled her spaghetti on her fork like a ballerina, making it plié into the sauce. Angelina whinnied and ate without using her hands. I decided to get on the computer after dinner and look up how far I’d have to walk to run away to the public library.

  “This presentation thing means I’m going to have to work late all this week,” Mom said. “I’ll need you to pick up Angie from Mrs. Taggert’s,” she told Dad.

  “I can do every day but Thursday,” he said. “I’ve got that appointment to see about rebricking that house in North Raleigh. I should be able to take Alexis to ballet though.”

  Mom sighed. “I’ll just have to find someone to cover for me. Anything else?”

  “I want to go to the school board meeting on Thursday,” I wanted to say.

  And this time, I actually said it.

  Mom and Dad looked at me in surprise.

  “A school board meeting?” Dad said. “Are you thinking about running for office, kiddo?”

  “No,” I said. “I just need to go.”

  “Thursday is already very busy, sweetheart,” Mom said. “Your dad has his appointment, Alexis has ballet at seven, Angelina has her playdate that afternoon, I’ve got a big presentation at work due next week—”

  “But they’re going to ban my favorite book!” I told them.

  “Who is?” Dad asked.

  “The school board!”

  “Why?” Mom said. “Is this something you shouldn’t be reading in the first place?”

  “No! It’s From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I’ve read it like a hundred times! But now it’s not on the shelf anymore, and it’s my favorite book!”

  “It sounds like you’re pretty fired up about this,” Mom said.

  I guess I was. Everybody at the table was looking at me. Angelina had even stopped pretending to be a pony.

  Mom and Dad glanced across the table at each other, saying something to each other without saying anything like they sometimes do, and Dad said, “I guess I could take her, if you can pick up Angelina and take Alexis to ballet too.”

  “I can’t do both,” Mom said. “But we can ask Mrs. Mitchell if Angelina can stay for dinner again. And maybe Alexis can come back to the office with me until it’s time for ballet.”

  Alexis and Angelina protested—Angelina said Mrs. Mitchell’s food was too spicy and Alexis always thought Mom’s office was too cold—but Mom and Dad told them they would both survive, and that was that. I was going to the school board meeting.

  I couldn’t believe it. For once I had actually said what I was thinking and something was happening about it. I felt a little flutter in my chest, like that split second when you’re peering over the top of the hill on a roller coaster and then the weight of it grabs you and drags you down, and you’re scared but really excited. I wanted to close my eyes and throw my hands in the air and scream, but that might have freaked everybody out.

  Then again, maybe nobody here in Crazytown would even notice.

  Common Sense

  Thursday came quick, and suddenly Dad was driving me to the school board meeting in his truck. The school board meeting where I was supposed to tell everybody why I like From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. With every mile that passed, I regretted opening my mouth a little bit more.

  The school board meeting was in a room on the third floor of a big gray building downtown. There was a curved table at the front where some of the school board members were already sitting, and two sections of uncomfortable seats facing them with an aisle running down the middle.

  And right at the front of the aisle was a podium with a microphone on it. The microphone I was supposed to get up and talk into.

  The folded piece of paper with the speech I’d written about From the Mixed-up Files crinkled in my pocket. I’ve only ever stolen one thing in my entire life—a lollipop from the grocery store when I was four. I’d snatched it while we were in the checkout line and stuck it in my pocket. But I was old enough to know it was wrong, and that lollipop felt radioactive the whole way out the door and into the parking lot. I felt like everybody could see it, like everybody knew I was a bad girl. It burned so hot that I broke down in tears and confessed before we ever got to the car. That piece of notebook paper in my pocket felt like that now. I was surprised it hadn’t set off all kinds of alarms on the way into the building. How was I ever going to stand up and read what I’d written in front of all those people?

  Mrs. Jones, the librarian, saw us come in and hurried over to give me a hug. She was wearing a black dress with white polka dots tonight, and big black polka dots for earrings.

  “Oh, honey, I’m so glad you came tonight,” she said. “Amy Anne’s our own honorary librarian,” she told Dad. “I think she spends more time in the library than I do.”

  I was suddenly worried Mrs. Jones was going to let it slip that I hung out there every afternoon instead of going to clubs. She didn’t know I’d been lying to Mom and Dad.

  She held out her hand to Dad instead. “Opal Jones,” she said.

  “Opal’s a pretty name,” Dad said, shaking her hand.

  Mrs. Jones blushed. Grown-up ladies always act weird around my dad. Mom says it’s because he has bricklayer arms and a movie star smile.

  “My parents gave me an interesting first name because our last name was Smith,” Mrs. Jones said. “Then I went and married a man named Jones.” She shrugged. “What can you do?”

  “So what’s all this about book banning?” Dad asked.

  Mrs. Jones took a deep breath. She had big lungs to fill. “It’s not the first time we’ve had a book challenged in the library. But it’s the first time the school board has gone over my head to pull a book from the shelves all by themselves. And it’s all because of that woman there.”

  Dad followed her gaze to a petite, pretty white woman with short blond hair. She wor
e a matching lavender skirt and jacket.

  “She doesn’t look like a book burner,” Dad said.

  “That is Mrs. Sarah Spencer, a pillar of our fair community,” Mrs. Jones said. “She’s a member of the Shelbourne Elementary PTA, the Shelbourne Elementary Playground Redevelopment Committee, the Raleigh Race for the Cure Foundation, the North Carolina Art Museum board, and the North Carolina State Opera Society.”

  “Oh,” my dad said, suddenly interested because of the opera. My stomach seized up and I grabbed his arm. I did not want him to start singing at the school board meeting.

  “More importantly,” said Mrs. Jones, “Mrs. Spencer and her husband are rich, which means the school board listens to her even more than they listen to me, the person they hired to do the job.”

  I didn’t know Mrs. Spencer, but I knew the boy in the seat beside her. His name was Trey. He was in Mr. Vaughn’s fourth grade homeroom with me, but he and I had a history. He had the same blond hair as his mom, only messier, and wore an untucked blue polo shirt and jeans. He looked up from the notebook he was drawing in, caught me staring at him, and quickly looked away.

  One of the school board members called the meeting to order, and we sat down with Mrs. Jones. The seats in the audience weren’t even half full.

  The board members talked about some boring stuff that only future-lawyer Rebecca would have been interested in, and then it was time for “public comment.” That meant people could come up to the podium to speak. I sank down in my chair a little, the paper in my pocket crinkling louder than firecrackers to me.

  “Dr. Opal Jones is our first speaker,” one of the school board members said.

  I sat up. “She’s a doctor?” I whispered.

  “Not a medical doctor,” Dad said. “Library science, probably.”

  There were library scientists? My eyes went wide as I imagined librarians in lab coats looking at books under microscopes, like crime-scene investigators on TV. Wild-haired library scientists cataloguing books with giant machines that crackled with electricity. Mad library scientists swirling new words around in glass beakers. I was so busy imagining what it would be like to be a library scientist that I missed most of Mrs. Jones’s speech.

  “But worse than ignoring the Request for Reconsideration forms and the whole system this school board put in place to review challenges to books,” Mrs. Jones was saying, “is the larger question of intellectual freedom.”

  Some of the school board members rolled their eyes and shifted in their seats like we all do in Mr. Vaughn’s class when he starts telling us how we’re all going to need to know how to use fractions one day, so we better pay attention. Mrs. Jones didn’t seem to notice.

  “It’s our job as educators to expose our children to as many different kinds of books and as many different points of view as possible. That means letting them read books that are too easy for them, or too hard for them. That means letting them read books that challenge them, or do nothing but entertain them. And yes, it means letting students read books with things in them we might disagree with and letting them make up their own minds about things, which is downright scary sometimes. But that’s what good education is all about.”

  Some of the school board members were shuffling papers and checking their phones. None of them seemed to be paying much attention to her.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Mrs. Jones said, “every parent has the right to decide what their child can and can’t read. What they cannot do is make that decision for everyone else. I respectfully ask that the school board overturn the arbitrary, closed-door decision to remove these books, and to require any parent still concerned about library materials to follow the established reconsideration policy set up by this board. Thank you.”

  Most of the school board members were looking at the table in front of them when she finished, not at Mrs. Jones. One of them coughed.

  “Thank you, Dr. Jones. Mrs. Spencer? You wanted to speak?”

  Trey’s mom went to the podium. Unlike Mrs. Jones, she didn’t have a piece of paper to read from.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the school board, I grew up in this county. I was a student at Shelbourne Elementary once,” she said. “And no, I won’t say how long ago.”

  A couple of the school board members laughed.

  “Back then, the school library was a safe place. A place where parents could trust that their children weren’t going to pick up a book that taught them how to lie, or steal, or cheat. They weren’t going to find a book that told them more about their bodies than they were ready to know at the age of ten, or nine, or five. They weren’t going to find a book that showed them it was all right to talk back and be disrespectful to adults. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think school should be a place where a parent’s authority is undermined. I think it should be a place where it’s reinforced.”

  I frowned. No book I’d read in the library had taught me to lie, to steal, or to cheat! Every kid who had any kind of brains knew how to do all that stuff already. And I was respectful of adults. I always did whatever they told me to do, even when I knew it was a load of pony poop.

  “Mrs. Jones never used the word censorship, but it was there behind everything she said,” Mrs. Spencer said. “I’m not for censorship. I’m for common sense. We have to protect our children. It’s not censorship to keep things away from children that aren’t age-appropriate. It’s common sense. I’m sure Mrs. Jones wouldn’t call it censorship to keep adult magazines filled with S-E-X out of her library.”

  S-E-X? Who was she spelling that out for? Did she think the kids in the room had never heard the word sex before—or that we couldn’t spell?

  “This is just eleven books,” Mrs. Spencer said. “That leaves thousands more in the elementary school library for our children to enjoy. Far better books, too. I have only asked to remove those books that are inappropriate or have no redeeming value. You made the right decision to remove these books from the library, and I hope you can trust in your own wisdom and common sense as parents to see that no child is ever exposed to them again. Thank you.”

  Beside us, Mrs. Jones cleared her throat and shifted in her seat.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Spencer,” one of the board members said. “Is there anyone else who wishes to speak to this issue?” he asked.

  Mrs. Jones looked over at me and smiled. Dad gave me a questioning look. This was it. This was why I had that piece of paper in my pocket. Why I’d gotten my parents to rearrange their schedules to bring me here. Why I was in a boring meeting room at seven o’clock on a school night instead of sitting in my bed reading a book. They both expected me to get up and say something. To tell the school board why they shouldn’t ban Mrs. Frankweiler. All I had to do was stand up and walk to the podium.

  My heart thumped in my chest and I stared straight ahead.

  “Anyone?” the school board member asked again.

  The school board waited.

  Mrs. Spencer waited.

  Mrs. Jones waited.

  Dad waited.

  I sucked on my braids.

  “All right then,” the school board member said. “There being no further comment on the matter, I move to uphold this board’s decision to remove these books from the Shelbourne Elementary library.”

  “Seconded,” someone said.

  No. No! I was supposed to say something. I wanted to say something. But I hadn’t. I couldn’t.

  “All in favor?”

  “Aye,” a bunch of them said.

  “All opposed?”

  “Nay,” two of them said.

  “Motion carries. Anyone else have another issue they’d like us to hear?”

  And just like that, it was over. One of the other adults in the audience got up to complain about how much homework her kids brought home, but I was barely listening. That was it. My one chance to speak up, my one chance to tell them why my favorite book was so great, and I had done what I always did—I sat there and said nothing. My face was so hot I thought
it would catch fire. I grabbed onto the bottom of my metal chair on both sides and hung on. I couldn’t even look at Dad or Mrs. Jones.

  The school board moved on to talking about bids on plumbers for another school, and my dad huffed.

  “I don’t think we need to sit around for the rest of this. We’ve already wasted enough time.”

  I nodded, trying not to cry.

  “I’m going to wait until the end,” Mrs. Jones whispered. “Bend the ear of one or two of those board members.”

  “Good luck,” Dad told her.

  I looked up at Mrs. Jones as I slid past her down the aisle. “I’m sorry,” I told her.

  “Oh, there’s nothing for you to be sorry about at all, honey,” Mrs. Jones said. She took my hand and squeezed it. “You didn’t do anything.”

  “I know. That’s the problem,” I wanted to say.

  But I didn’t.

  Mixed-up Mrs. Frankfurter

  In the car on the way home, I pulled the piece of paper out of my pocket and unfolded it. At the top I had written “Why From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler Is My Favorite Book.” What I had written below that wasn’t long, but it had taken me a long time to do it.

  How do you say why you like a thing? You can point to all the good parts. That you like how they ran away from home to a museum. That you like how Claudia packed her clothes in her empty violin case. That they slept in a big antique bed and took baths in the fountain. That they solve a mystery about an old statue. I like all that stuff about From the Mixed-up Files.

  But none of those is really the reason I’ve read it thirteen times and still want to read it again. That’s something … bigger. Deeper. More than all those things added together. How do you explain to someone else why a thing matters to you if it doesn’t matter to them? How can you put into words how a book slips inside of you and becomes a part of you so much that your life feels empty without it?

  “Is that your speech?” Dad asked. “Why didn’t you read it? Dang it, Amy Anne. I thought that was the whole reason we came all the way out here tonight. The whole reason we rearranged everybody’s schedules. Your mother and I have a lot better things to do with our time.”