Review: Ban This Book

Ban This Book by Alan Gratz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ban This Book is the latest in a long line of middle-grade reads designed to send a message about a school/societal ill using precocious kids subverting authority. This is basically the Frindle of banned books, and as a message title that deals with a long-discussed topic, it's absolutely fine.

This book will appeal to the readers that it's geared toward in part due to the cameos of sorts by a lot of their favorite titles and authors - Dav Pilkey and Captain Underpants both feature broadly in this book in particular - and while the book does veer into unlikely territory as the arms race escalates, you can almost forgive it for the overall message.

While I fear this is more a book for librarians than for kids, there's enough kid appeal here to get through the noise, and Alan Gratz is a known name in slightly older circles in his writing, so this has a lot of promise. I don't know if I'd put it ahead of the Clements "School Stories," but it's worth being part of the discussion.

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