Mac Delaney really wants to like his sixth-grade teacher, who seems at the start of school to be precisely the type of instructor who will inspire interested learning. But then he and his best friends, Denis and Marci, realize she's the woman who writes frequent letters to the editor trying to police community standards and impose her moral compass on the town.

She doesn't like it much, Mac learns, when she's challenged in class, like for instance when he tries to tell other students the truth about Columbus beyond the hackneyed "sailed the ocean blue" rhyme.

When he and his friends realize that she has censored words in a book they are reading for class -- phrases blacked out with a magic marker in every copy of Jane Yolen's award-winning young-adult novel The Devil's Arithmetic, a time-travel story about the Holocaust -- they get mad and try to correct what they see as a terrible wrong. They soon learn that not all adults -- especially some of the school's administrators -- see the issue the same way that they do.

Before it's all said and done, Yolen herself will make an appearance. According to King's notes at the end, this book was written with Yolen's blessing.

Amy Sarig King's book Attack of the Black Rectangles addresses the important issue of book censorship through the eyes of a child who is smart enough to recognize what is happening and angry enough to try to do something about it. Fortunately for Mac, his mother and grandfather are supportive of his efforts, while his estranged father -- well, he's a whole different story. I'll let King fill you in on those details herself.

Besides censorship, the story also deals with the dynamics that exist among friends and family members, as well as dating, junk food, dress codes, issues of personal identity and a handful of draconian town ordinances. And, while Mac and his friends don't fix every problem around them, they show that dedicated activism -- even by the very young -- can have a positive effect on the world.

I found this book while volunteering at the Scholastic book fair at my children's elementary school. I paged through it during a break in business and was startled to realize it's set in a fictional composite of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania -- where I myself grew up and spent most of my adult life. Based on references to a historic pretzel factory and girl's school in Mac's town, he seems to be living in Lititz, specifically -- famous in recent years for being named "America's Coolest Small Town" back in 2013. King's book even references the neighboring county of York, where I live now, and notes that some York schools made the national news not too long ago for their own shameful censorship issues.

I'm not sure my kids are quite old enough to read Attack of the Black Rectangles just yet, but they will be soon, so of course I had to buy a copy and read it myself before stashing it on a bookshelf for them to read and discuss when they're a little older. I am so glad I found it -- for the story it tells and the message it imparts. The local connection just adds spice to the tale.

[ visit Amy Sarig King's website ]

[ visit Jane Yolen's website ]