Ban This Book

by Alan Gratz

  The chairman of the school board banged his gavel for quiet. “We’re not going to hear any more arguments for keeping removed books on the shelf,” he told us. “We’ve already had that discussion.”

  “No…” I said. “We’re not here to try to get those books back,” I said. “We’re here with more challenges.”

  That was the cue. Danny, Trey, and I opened our backpacks, and Rebecca opened her briefcase. Each of us pulled out a huge pile of papers and carried them up to the round table at the front, stacking them on top of each other so they would look really impressive. Behind us, I could hear cameras snapping, and more whispers and questions.

  “What is this?” the chairman asked.

  I went back to the microphone. “Request for Reconsideration forms,” I told him. “We think there are more books we shouldn’t be able to read.”

  The school board members started taking sheets from the big stack. Each one was for a different book. I’d made sure.

  “But—there must be thousands of books here!” one of them said.

  “Seven thousand, five hundred, and forty-one,” I said. It wasn’t every book in the library—not even half—but it had put a serious dent in the shelves.

  That number got a big response from the audience, and the chairman had to gavel them quiet again.

  “These are a joke,” one of the school board members said. “You want to ban a math textbook?”

  “It has imaginary numbers in it,” I said. “We’re afraid that will encourage kids to have imaginary friends.”

  The audience laughed, and I felt better about talking. My hands relaxed on the podium.

  “Here’s one challenging the dictionary,” said another board member.

  Danny leaned in to the microphone. “Oh, that book is full of dirty words. I looked all of them up.” He turned to the cameras behind him, ran his fingers through his hair, and smiled a million dollar smile. “Danny Purcell,” he said. “Two Ns, two Ls.”

  “Magic Tree House?” said another board member. “Challenged for … building code violations?”

  Mrs. Spencer stood in a huff. “Your Honors, this is clearly a joke. Can we move on?”

  My dad stood up. “Oh, no,” he said. “I work in construction, and I’ve seen those books. That tree house doesn’t have any handrails, and you can see from the picture those floor joists aren’t anywhere near twelve inches apart.”

  That got another laugh and stirred everybody up again.

  “Mr. Chairman!” Mrs. Spencer called over the ruckus. “Mr. Chairman, I move that these new challenges be ignored so we can get on to real business.”

  “You can’t make a motion during public comment,” Rebecca said into the microphone. “Besides, she’s not even supposed to be talking. You said only one speaker at a time.”

  “And who are you?” the chairman asked.

  “Rebecca Zimmerman. Legal counsel for the B.B.L.L.,” Rebecca said importantly.

  “Then surely her time is up,” Mrs. Spencer said.

  The chairman looked relieved. “It is up. I’m afraid you’re going to have to take a seat, Miss Ollinger. It’s…” He consulted his list, and his voice turned weary. “Rebecca Zimmerman’s turn to speak.”

  Rebecca leaned in to the microphone. “I respectfully cede my remaining time to Amy Anne Ollinger.”

  The chairman of the school board covered his mike, but everyone in the room could hear him ask the other members, “Can she do that? Is that allowed?”

  “It’s in Robert’s Rules of Order,” Rebecca told him. “And the next twelve names are all Shelbourne Elementary students who are going to cede their time to Amy Anne, so you’re going to have to listen to what she has to say.”

  The kids who’d signed up to speak stood up, scattered in different rows around the room. Rebecca’s mom and dad, both wearing suits, gave her big smiles and double thumbs-up.

  “Your Honor,” I said, charging ahead before they could tell me to sit down, “you have to ban these books.”

  “We have to do no such thing,” the chairman said. “Most of these challenges are for silly reasons.”

  “Silly to you, maybe. All reasons are silly to someone else, and we think the challenges to the books already removed are silly. What makes one person’s reason any sillier than another person’s reason?”

  That got them quiet, and the quiet made me nervous again. I desperately wanted to suck on my braids, but I knew I couldn’t. Not here. I gripped the podium harder. “You took The Egypt Game off the library shelves because one person didn’t like the kids pretending to worship an Egyptian god. You took the Junie B. Jones books off the shelf because one person didn’t like the way she talks. You took my favorite book in the whole wide world, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, off the shelf because one person said it taught kids how to lie and cheat and run away from home, even though I never cheated on anything.”

  I hoped they wouldn’t notice I’d left out lie and run away from home, and pushed on.

  “You can’t have it both ways. If you banned those books because just one person had a problem with them, you have to ban all these books too, because we found one person who had a problem with each of them. And when you’re done, there isn’t going to be a single book left on the Shelbourne Elementary shelves. But I guess that’s okay with you. The Wake County School Board doesn’t want its students to read any books that scare them, or teach them, or entertain them, or show them new things, or make them sad, or happy, or shock them, or open their minds. Which is all of them.”

  The room was dead quiet now, except for the hum of the TV cameras. The school board members looked pale under the fluorescent lights in the ceiling. Or maybe that was because of the TV cameras too.

  Mrs. Spencer spoke up. She had never sat down. “This is silly,” she said. “Those books were removed from the Shelbourne Elementary library for good reason—because they were harmful. Each and every one of them encouraged bad behavior of one kind or another, and I think we can all agree that none of us want an entire generation of Shelbourne Elementary students growing up to be menaces to society, just because some book they read in fourth grade showed them how.”

  Rebecca was about to say something, probably to remind the school board that there was only supposed to be one speaker at a time, but I put a hand on her arm to stop her.

  “So all those books you challenged,” I said to Mrs. Spencer, “if I read one of those, I would grow up to be a bad person?”

  “I’d say the chances are good, yes.”

  I was ready for this. I could feel every eye in the room on me, waiting to hear what I would say. Waiting for me, Amy Anne Ollinger, to speak up.

  “Mrs. Spencer, one of the first books you banned was Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Have you ever read it?”

  One or two people in the room coughed. They knew the book talked about embarrassing stuff, stuff you didn’t talk about in a big room full of people. Stuff like the things that happen to a girl’s body when she becomes a teenager.

  Mrs. Spencer blushed. “No. Of course not.”

  I looked right at her. “Are you sure?”

  Mrs. Spencer raised herself up. “I’m sure I didn’t.”

  “That’s funny,” I said. “Because I’ve got this old date due card from the Shelbourne Elementary copy, and it’s got your signature on here from 1982.”

  The audience gasped and giggled as I held up the card I’d found in the back of the library’s old copy of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. The color drained from Mrs. Spencer’s face.

  “Well, I—I might have checked it out once, but when I saw what it was, I didn’t read it,” Mrs. Spencer said.

  “Five times?” I asked. That got a big laugh from the audience. The TV reporters were loving it! Mrs. Spencer looked sick, and she started to sit down. I didn’t like what she’d done, and I wanted to fix it, but I didn’t want to punish her.

  “Mrs. Spencer, wait,” I said. “Mrs. Spence
r, is it true you’re on the North Carolina Art Museum board?”

  Mrs. Spencer looked confused. “I—yes. I am.”

  “And the Raleigh Race for the Cure Foundation board?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the North Carolina State Opera Society board?”

  “Yes,” she said, and my dad whistled a little cheer.

  “And you were the one who raised money for the new lower-school playground at Shelbourne Elementary,” I said.

  “Well, yes. There were a lot of people involved with that, but I oversaw it, yes.”

  “Mrs. Spencer, would you say you’re a good person?” I asked.

  Mrs. Spencer swallowed like she was trying not to cry. “Yes,” she said. “I like to think so.”

  “I think so too,” I told her. “I think you grew up to be a very nice person, and a good mom, and a very good citizen. Even though you read this book you said was so bad five times when you were in fifth grade. Probably because for all the amazing things books can do, they can’t make you into a bad person.”

  Mrs. Spencer sat down to wipe her eyes with a tissue.

  The room was quiet again, and everyone was still watching me. The chairman of the school board finally cleared his throat and spoke.

  “Miss Ollinger? Do you have anything else?”

  “Well, we do have a presentation about the First Amendment, drawn by our challenge response coordinator, Trey McBride,” I said.

  The chairman held up a hand. “I don’t think we need that.”

  One of the other school board members leaned toward her mike. “I think perhaps we do, Stan.” She motioned for Trey to bring them the pictures, and he handed out the presentation he and I had created for Mr. Vaughn’s class. The school board passed them around respectfully.

  “What’s this one with the pope lifting weights?” one of them asked.

  “The free exercise of religion,” Trey told them.

  I gave him an exasperated look.

  “What?” he said. “It still works! They can do whatever they want in church, even if it’s jerks and squats.”

  “Thank you, Mr. McBride,” said the lady who’d asked for the pictures. He collected them all and came back to the podium, and we waited.

  The school board members knew they were in trouble. They either had to ban all the books we were challenging, or they had to ban none of them. Either way, they were going to look like idiots in front of the TV cameras.

  Mrs. Jones came to their rescue. She got up and joined us at the podium.

  “I think I may have a solution,” she said. “If Miss Ollinger will cede some of her time to me?”

  I nodded.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the school board, not so long ago, when I was the librarian at Shelbourne Elementary, we had an official policy for book challenges. When a book was challenged, it went to a faculty committee for review, and then to me, your hired representative, for a final decision. It was a fair and balanced system you yourselves designed and approved, and it was a system that protected everyone in the process. But none of the books that have been removed from the Shelbourne Elementary shelves ever went through that process. Not one.”

  One or two of the school board members started to understand where she was going, even if I didn’t.

  “All this trouble began when the official Request for Reconsideration policy was abandoned, and this board began arbitrarily removing books from the shelves. I humbly submit that we go back to the policy as set down in the school board’s bylaws. In doing so, the books originally removed from the Shelbourne Elementary shelves will be returned—pending a full review by the faculty committee and a final decision by the school librarian. Then, if it’s determined that the books are inappropriate for students that age, they can be removed. And if not…”

  Mrs. Jones trailed off, but we all knew what would happen. What was going to happen. The books would stay on the Shelbourne Elementary shelves, and everyone who had banned them to begin with would get a great big do-over. And this time, they wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

  “Move to submit all challenged books through the Reconsideration Policy as set forth in the school board bylaws,” one of the board members said.

  “Second!” three more of them said quickly.

  “All those in favor?” asked the chairman.

  “Aye,” they all said quickly. He didn’t even ask if there were any opposed. He banged his gavel, and the room erupted in cheers.

  I grabbed up Danny and Trey and Rebecca in one big hug.

  “I don’t understand,” Danny said. “What’s it mean?”

  “It means they made a motion during public comment time, which legally you’re not supposed to do,” Rebecca said.

  “Oh hush,” I told her. I hopped up and down. “It means we won!”

  Agent Double-A

  The day after the school board meeting, every local news station and newspaper wanted an interview with me. We even got a call from a national cable news channel. Mom and Dad finally gave in and let me do interviews, but I said the same thing to all of them. It was something Mrs. Jones had said the first day Mrs. Spencer came in to challenge Captain Underpants, and I practiced it over and over until I got it right every time:

  “Nobody has the right to tell you what books you can and can’t read except your parents.”

  Mrs. Jones got her job back, and all the books that had been banned from the Shelbourne Elementary library were returned to the shelves for good. Somebody from the local newspaper came out to take a picture of me, Rebecca, Danny, and Trey helping Mrs. Jones put them back.

  Before we got started, Mrs. Jones pinned a plastic badge to my shirt. I flipped it up to look at it. It was one of the badges the teachers wore. It had my picture on it, and beside that it said, Amy Anne Ollinger, Assistant Librarian.

  “There you go,” Mrs. Jones said. “Now it’s official. Although, if you’re going to be a real librarian, we’re going to have to have a talk about library patron privacy. But that’s a discussion for another time. Congratulations, Amy Anne. And thank you.”

  Mrs. Jones swallowed me in a big polka-dotted hug, and Rebecca, Danny, and Trey clapped like I’d won some big award.

  Mrs. Jones wheeled out the cart of banned books, and we started putting them back where they belonged while the reporter took pictures. When we got to the end, there were a bunch of stapled books with construction-paper covers that I had never seen before. The title on the first one was Agent Double-A Versus the Book-Eating Bovine. There was a picture on the cover of a spy girl with a mask over her eyes, fighting a ninja cow with a book in its mouth. In the top corner, it said “First Amendment Comics.”

  “Those are some new acquisitions I was hoping you could help me shelve,” Mrs. Jones said. “They go in the graphic novels section under M, for McBride.”

  Danny flicked his hair out of his eyes so he could see. “Trey drew this?” he said. “Sweet.”

  “Agent Double-A, hunh?” Rebecca said. “She looks a lot like you, Amy Anne.”

  Trey blushed. “I just got inspired.”

  I grinned. I liked it. Especially because I wasn’t a mouse anymore. I was a kick-butt secret agent.

  “I’m not sure your mom is going to like being drawn as a cow though,” I said.

  Trey’s eyes went wide. “Oh. Yeah. Well, let’s just not tell her.”

  The End

  I admired my new librarian badge as I sat on the first bus home that afternoon with my sister Alexis. The bus let us off at the bottom of our street, and Alexis pirouetted for home. I stood and stared again at my yellow house. I still liked the idea of running away, From the Mixed-up Files style, but only for the adventure. I wasn’t so reluctant to go home anymore. My house was still Chaos Central. No doubt about that. It was me who was different. I wasn’t going to take things lying down anymore. If something bothered me, I was going to say something about it.

  “Come on, Amy Anne!” Alexis called, and I hurried to catch up.<
br />
  Flotsam and Jetsam greeted us at the door, jumping all over us and almost knocking me down. They scrambled away just as quickly, chasing Angelina as she galloped by into the living room. No one was in the kitchen, but I could hear Dad singing his favorite opera song somewhere down the hall.

  “Amy Anne? Are you and Alexis home?” my mom called. That surprised me. Mom wasn’t usually home this early.

  “Yeah!” I yelled back.

  “Come and help us,” Mom said. “We’re in the guest bedroom.”

  Great. If they were in the guest bedroom, that probably meant they were cleaning it for somebody to stay in it, and they wanted me to help. Sure enough, when I got there I found Dad pulling boxes out of the closet and Mom taking stuff off her desk.

  “Why don’t Angelina and Alexis have to help?” I wanted to ask. So I did.

  “Because this isn’t going to be their bedroom,” Mom said. “It’s going to be yours.”

  I was stunned. My bedroom? As in, all mine and nobody else’s?

  Dad lifted a dumbbell. “Your mom and I realized we had a workout room nobody ever worked out in.”

  “And a home office I never do office work in,” Mom said. “And if your grandmother and grandfather come and visit, we can put them in our room and we can sleep on the pull-out couch in the living room. It’s high time you and Alexis had your own rooms.”

  “And maybe now you won’t feel like you have to stay late in the library after school just to avoid coming home,” Dad said.

  I blushed. “I’m sorry,” I told them again.

  Mom hugged me. “It’s all right, sweetheart. It’s not a big house, I know, and it can feel overwhelming sometimes.”

  “A lot of times,” I thought. And I said so.

  Mom laughed. “A lot of times. But now you’ll have your very own Fortress of Solitude. Here—I’ve already cleared off a bookcase for you. You can use one shelf for the books you own, and another for the books you check out from the library.”

  I ran to get my stack of books from my room—my old room—and put them on the shelf one by one. I was going to have to start alphabetizing them by author. Maybe even separate them out by subject. But for now I just stuffed them onto the bookshelf. My very own bookshelf. I filled the shelf beneath the books I owned with the six books I’d brought home that day from the library.