THIS BOOK WON'T BURN (audiobook) by Samira Ahmed

Published by Little, Brown Young Readers in 2024.
Read by Kauser Mohammed.
Duration: 10 hours, 34 minutes.
Unabridged.

Book summary

Noor Khan is a senior in high school and she is devastated. Her father walked out on her family and moved back to his native England. He gave no warning and the family is reeling.

Noor's mother decides that a change of location would be best. Noor, her little sister (a freshman), and her mom move from their diverse upper middle class Chicago neighborhood to a downstate Illinois small town so that her mom can work at a small college. 

Noor hates it. She misses her friends and the vibrancy of Chicago. She also feels like an oddity because she is Indian and Muslim in a school that is very white and very Christian. 

She determines to gut out this one last semester of high school and then head back to Chicago to go to college. She decides she doesn't need friends or even to enjoy this small town - she just needs to get in, get the diploma and then get out.

But, she finds friends - the only Muslim/Indian boy in the area and his best friend - an proudly out-of-the-closet feisty lesbian. Together, these three comprise the diversity of their high school. They hang out in the school library whenever possible.

The library seems like a refuge until Noor notices that the stacks are missing lots and lots of books. The local chapter of a Moms for Liberty-type group has demanded that dozens and dozens of books be removed due to content. Like most of the large scale book bans across the country, this book ban has focused on books with LGBTQ+ characters, books with black and brown authors, and books that focus on America's troubled racial history. The local school board President is using his support of the high school library's book ban as the springboard to a run for the state legislature.

Can Noor stick to her original plan and just be quiet and graduate? Or, does she speak up in defense of her ideals of free speech and the freedom to read? 

Also, she is very much intrigued by the Indian/Muslim boy. But, she is also strangely attracted to a very nice white boy - he's an athlete, he's polite, and he thinks Noor is great - and his stepdad is the school board member that initiated the book ban...

My Review

The author, Samira Ahmed

The author, Samira Ahmed, has written several books that have been added to the seemingly never-ending book ban lists. She was inspired to write this book when a small town teacher spoke with her about her experience. The teacher was using one of Ahmed's books in her class when the book was banned. The teacher was caught in a bind - small town politics meant that her school administration would not support her and she feared for her job if she pushed to her hard. Her colleagues didn't fight for the books because they were about people who were different than those who lived in their town. They refused to fight for books written by and about people who were unlike themselves (NOTE: I am a public school teacher and I am so unbelievably disappointed that literature teachers would respond to a book challenge like that.)

The author changed that story a bit - instead of a teacher, she created a fiercely independent high school student with a strong sense of right and wrong when it comes to the First Amendment. 

I liked this story a lot. It drew me in - Noor and her friends are great characters. The love triangle aspect of the story works to make the consequences of Noor's actions even more powerful.

The reader was Kausar Mohammed and she did a fantastic job with a wide variety of voices and accents. Excellent work.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: This Book Won't Burn by Samira Ahmed.

WILL GRAYSON, WILL GRAYSON (audiobook) by John Green and David Levithan

Audiobook published in 2010 by Listening Library.
Performed by MacLeod Andrews and Nick Podehl.
Duration: 7 hours, 51 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis

Will Grayson, Will Grayson is the story of two Chicago area teens named Will Grayson who attend different schools and do not know one another.

One Will Grayson is determined not to risk hurt romantic feelings by not putting himself out there to make connections and possibly get hurt. Instead, he focuses on knowing all about obscure bands and lives vicariously through his over-the-top best friend, Tiny Cooper. Tiny Cooper is a massive mountain of young man who is also gay and is also the school's most talented athlete. Think of the biggest football lineman you have ever seen, make that lineman great at every sport, able to sing show tunes at the drop of a hat, and the biggest social butterfly in the school.

The other Will Grayson is a closeted gay teen who has found an online boyfriend from Ohio. He muddles through high school life by getting involved in low commitment activities like the math team (he is only on the team to provide the minimum number of bodies required - the math geniuses take care of all of the real work). He has a pushy female frenemy that clearly is interested in him and does not understand why he does not reciprocate. 

One day, the two Will Graysons meet. When their worlds collide, everything changes...

My Review

Tiny Cooper is, without a doubt, one of the best characters I have read in a book this year. He is a walking talking stereotype in many ways - the gay character who loves musical theater, writes his own songs, and falls in love at the drop of a hat. But, he is such a big personality character that he transcends all of those stereotypes.

The story itself pulls the reader in (or in my case, the listener). As a teacher, I found the characters mostly realistic when compared to the students I see and hear in my classroom every day.

But, there were some ridiculous things that were so unrealistic that the teacher in me just couldn't buy it. For example, Tiny Cooper is given student council funds to put on a musical that he has written in the school theater. There is no way that any school would put on this musical. You might be able to put on an overtly gay-themed musical, but not one with so many direct sexual references. They just keep on coming - one after another after another.

I could buy it if they were putting this musical on in a local theater that was not affiliated with the school. I've seen that happen a couple of times in my 35+ year teaching career.

That being said, it is a fun book. An acquaintance told me that this was her all time favorite book. I wouldn't go that far, but I did like it quite a bit. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan. 

This book has been included in book ban lists across the country due to its LGBTQ+ themes, sexual references, alcohol, and cursing. Shocker! High school students curse! Orange County in Florida is one of those places (Link to article).

OUR SUBWAY BABY (audiobook) by Peter Mercurio

Published in 2020 by Listening Library.

Read by the author, Peter Mercurio.

Duration: 7 minutes.

Unabridged.

I first heard about this story and the book Our Subway Baby in a social media post so I searched out the book. I didn't realize it was a book for children when I started searching, but it's a sweet little book.

The book starts with Danny Stewart spotting a newborn infant boy that was abandoned in the corner of a New York subway station. Stewart contacts the police, but also his boyfriend, Peter Mercurio, wondering if this was somehow fate. After all, they could never have children, but here is a child in need.

The couple keeps tabs of the baby and eventually adopt him. Their families and friends help them gather all of the things parents would need and baby Kevin finally joins his family.

The story is told from the point of view of Peter, as if he were talking to a young Kevin and telling him how Kevin found his way to his home. The language is simplified and the tricky details of an adoption are glossed over. The events in the story actually took place in the year 2000, so Kevin is a grown man nowadays.

This is a super heartwarming story. I give it an enthusiastic 5 stars out of 5.

Unfortunately, there are people that are against this book. It tied for the 12th most banned picture book in 2023-2024. Some people are not happy that an abandoned baby was saved and found a family. They are upset that the parents are gay men. Ugh. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com: Our Subway Baby.

THE OUTSIDERS (audiobook) by S. E. Hinton

Originally published in 1967.
Audiobook published in 2004 by Listening Library.
Read by Jim Fyfe,
Duration: 5 hours, 9 minutes.
Unabridged.

Listed on BBC's list of 100 Most Inspiring Novels in 2019.
Author is the winner of the inaugural Margaret A. Edwards Award for YA 

Synopsis:

This is a true YA classic. Some consider this to be the book that invented the YA genre. Written by a high school student in the 1960's, The Outsiders is the story of a group of "greasers" in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

Greasers are poor teens who grow up on the tough side of town. Adult supervision is pretty lax and they spend their days smoking, flirting with girls, and working. They join loose gangs and fight among themselves, but they all unite when their biggest enemies come around. Their biggest enemies are the rich kids who cruise the poor side of town looking for a fight.

The main character is the oddly-named Ponyboy. Ponyboy's deceased parents liked to give their children odd names. Ponyboy and his two older brothers live together in their childhood home and somehow scrape by.

One very late night, Ponyboy and his oldest brother have an argument. Ponyboy runs from the house, finds one of his friends, and they wander the neighborhood. They are sitting in a park when a car full of the rich kids finds them and decides to make an example of them...

My review:

It's been a long time since I read this book, but I read it several times when I was in upper elementary. I came back to this book thinking it was going to be would be lightweight and that I had overestimated its quality when I was a young adult reader.

Turns out that I was pleasantly surprised. While the writing style is pretty simple, this is not a simple book. It has layers and complexity and was an astoundingly good novel, especially when you consider that it was written by a high school student.

I am glad I re-read it as an audiobook. Jim Fyfe did a good job with voice characterizations.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton.

Note: This book has often been placed on banned book lists over the years, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. I have tagged it with the MAGA Censorship List tag because, more recently, it was challenged in Williamsburg, Iowa  and was put on a book ban list in Tennessee. The last linked article has a searchable database because the list has more than 1,100 unique titles.

BAN THIS BOOK (audiobook) by Alan Gratz

Published in 2017 by Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Read by Bahni Turpin.
Duration: 5 hours, 17 minutes.
Unabridged.

My Synopsis

Ban This Book is the story of Amy Anne Ollinger, a fourth grade girl who is shocked when she gets to the library and finds out that her favorite book, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, has been removed from the shelves as part of a book ban. Amy Anne reads all sorts of books (except Captain Underpants books - they're kind of silly) but she loves this book and comes back to it often. She has read it 13 times and wanted to read it again. 

Amy Anne is told that a parent has complained to the school board about several books and they skipped the established plan to deal with these sorts of complaints and simply voted to remove them. 

Amy Anne's parents buy her a copy of the book and she takes it to school to read when she can during the day. Her friends find out about the book ban, see that she has a copy and ask to read it. In return, they offer her copies of banned books that they own. Other kids see their books and things start to get interesting...

My Review

This was a thoroughly enjoyable audiobook. As the plot gets more complicated, the arguments for and against school library book bans are laid out. Amy Anne is against them in general, but she is no absolutist (and neither are her parents.) She knows that she's just not ready for some topics.

To be completely honest, the kids seem pretty advanced for typical fourth graders, but what transpires is not entirely out of the skill set of kids that age.

What I really liked about this book is that Amy Anne epitomizes what John Lewis meant when he said that we should "get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America."

And that brings us to the reason that I listened to this audiobook. In June of 2024 this book made headlines because a Florida school system banned it from its libraries. Yes, the school board rejected the established plan to deal with parent concerns about books, overruled the findings of the system they established and voted to ban Ban this Book. If that sounds familiar, that is because that is what happened in the book (see 5 paragraphs above.)

A school board member who is also a member of Moms for Liberty - a well-known source of book ban lists - asked to have this book banned. Yes, indeed. These moms are really into banning books in the name of Liberty. In fact, they've been successful at banning more than 140 books in this school system alone.

The author

The board looked at the very existence of the book as a challenge to their authority. A board member said, "The title itself and the theme challenges our authority. And it even goes so far as to not only mention books that are deemed inappropriate by school boards, including ours, it not only mentions them but it lists them."

I like this quote from the author about the book bans: "They banned the book because it talks about the books that they have banned and because it talks about book banning. It feels like they know exactly what they're doing and they're somewhat ashamed of what they're doing and they don't want a book on the shelves that calls them out."

I highly recommend this audiobook. I rate it 5 stars out of 5. Lots of fun.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Ban This Book by Alan Gratz.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut

The first edition cover

Published with the alternate title "The Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death."
Originally published in 1969.

Listed in Time Magazine's 100 Best Novels Since 1923.

Slaughterhouse-Five is the most famous, most celebrated, and most controversial novel of Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007.) 

My synopsis:

The book serves as a memoir to Vonnegut's horrific experiences as a prisoner of war in World War II and as a sci-fi exploration of the concept of time travel. 

Vonnegut's very green unit was rotated to the front in December of 1944 in order to give experienced combat troops a break. The weather was bad, the terrain was bad, and the Germans had been retreating regularly. It was presumed that the Germans would be content to settle in to winter quarters, rest, refit, and pick up the fighting in 1945. 

Instead, the Germans launched a surprise offensive and what followed was the Battle of the Bulge. Lots of Americans were captured and taken back to Germany to be prisoners of war, including Kurt Vonnegut. Eventually, Vonnegut was taken to Dresden to work. The main character of this novel, Billy Pilgrim, was also captured and eventually taken to Dresden.

At Dresden, in February of 1945, Billy Pilgrim and Vonnegut were firebombed along with the rest of the city. The prisoners of war survived because they were being housed in partially underground slaughterhouse for hogs (the hogs had long ago been consumed.) They were in slaughterhouse number 5. 

Where Pilgrim and Vonnegut's stories separate is the sci-fi portion. At the beginning of the book we are told that "Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time." 

Pilgrim is sliding back in forth in time along his own timeline. He can do nothing to change events, he just keeps sliding back and forth. 

My review:

Vonnegut graded his own books in his book
Palm Sunday. I agree with his assessment of 
Slaughterhouse-Five.

This is the second time I've read this book. This time around I really paid attention to the non-science fiction parts of the book and looked for the connections to Vonnegut's own life. Chapter One practically screams for the reader to do so, but I did not the first time around.

This time, I could really see that Vonnegut was working through his wartime experiences through the story of Billy Pilgrim and his own story as the narrator. 

I was struck by the passage describing the condition of the American prisoners of war as their overloaded train car waited on the tracks for a turn on the tracks:

"Even though Billy's train wasn't moving, its boxcars were kept locked tight. Nobody was to get off until its final destination. To the guards who walked up and down outside, each car became a single organism which ate and drank and excreted through its ventilators. It talked or sometimes yelled through its ventilators, too. In went water and loaves of black-bread and sausage and cheese, and out came shit and piss and language.

Human beings in there were excreting into steel helmets which were passed to the people at the ventilators, who dumped them. Billy was a dumper. The human beings also passed canteens, which guards would fill with water. When food came in, the human beings were quiet and trusting and beautiful. They shared."

Vonnegut in 1965.

What struck me was that there in the middle of the most destructive war in human history, enemies were taking care of their enemies like decent people. Later in his career Vonnegut would make the same point with this comment in his book A Man Without a Country:  "A saint is a person who behaves decently in a shocking indecent country."

Vonnegut's trademark humor and clever new ways of saying the same old things abound in this book. Here is his commentary on a female character: "She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies. Men looked at her and wanted to fill her up with babies right away."

And there it is in a nutshell. This is Vonnegut's masterpiece. It is profoundly sad. It is funny. It is a memoir. It is sci-fi. And so it goes.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. 

Note: This book has been challenged multiple times over the last 50 years for sexual content, foul language and teaching principles contrary to the Bible. Amazingly, it has stayed on "banned books" lists for more than 50 years. At one point, it was referred to a prosecutor to see if the school was distributing pornography to students. The prosecutor said that it was "not in violation of criminal laws." See this site for more information.

Note: This book was put on book ban lists in Tennessee in multiple counties in 2025. The article has a searchable database because the list has more than 1,100 unique titles

To its credit, the Vonnegut Museum in Indianapolis has a history of sending free copies of Slaughterhouse-Five to students at schools where the book has been banned.

THEY CALLED US ENEMY (graphic novel) by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, and Steven Scott

Published in 2019 by Top Shelf Productions.
Illustrated by Harmony Becker.

Winner of the 2020 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work.

Winner of the 2020 American Book Award.


George Takei is most famous for his part in the the original Star Trek series and the subsequent movies. But, over the last 20 years or so, Takei has been on a personal crusade to make sure that the Japanese Internment Camps are not forgotten. 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order in February of 1942 to place all of the Japanese on the west coast of the United States into camps because they could not be trusted not to help the Empire of Japan. This order applied to all Japanese, even if there was absolutely no reason to suspect them of doing anything at all to help Japan. Takei's family was included in this round up and this graphic novel is that story.

The graphic novel format is ideal for the story of a young man caught up in a situation he cannot possibly understand. Takei does a good job of going back and forth from his childhood perspective to multiple adult perspectives (Takei at various points in his life) in order to explain things better.

I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THEY CALLED US ENEMY (graphic novel) by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, and Steven Scott.

Note: This book has been listed on multiple book ban lists - in Tennessee (use the searchable database because the list has more than 1,100 unique titles) in 2025 and in Pennsylvania right after it was published. I suppose that people are scared of learning America's history.

I AM NOT YOUR YOUR PERFECT MEXICAN DAUGHTER (audiobook) by Erika L. Sánchez

Finalist for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature.
Named to Time Magazine's 100 Best YA Books of All Time.

Published by Listening Library in 2017.

Read by Kyla Garcia.
Duration: 9 hours, 41 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Julia is the daughter of Mexican immigrants to the United States. They live in pretty run down neighborhood in Chicago. She is in high school. Her family doesn't really understand her (basic YA fare) and she really loves writing. She is looking forward to moving on to college - like so many kids she wants nothing more than to get far, far away from where she grew up.

There is one presence that looms over everything - her dead sister Olga. Olga was older than Julia and has recently died in a bizarre accident - she stepped off of a city bus and was hit by a semi-truck. Her family is traumatized, of course. To make matters worse, Julia is constantly being compared to Olga - the perfect daughter who only gets more perfect in memory.

Julia digs around in her sister's bedroom (untouched since the day she died) and finds a few things that just seem out of character for Olga. Suddenly, there's a mystery and Julia just has to follow the clues...

My review:

At first, I found myself really liking this book. I was intrigued about the mystery element.

But, suddenly we are going from one YA (and Latino) stereotype to another. It got so ridiculous that I starting listing them. If only the author had just settled for 2 or 3 of them (instead of 15 or so.)

*****

This book is a frequent flyer on lists of books that MAGA parents turn in to be banned from local public libraries and school libraries. Here is a ban attempt from South Carolina and here is one from Texas, for example. It's not a book I would want to teach in my classroom (there are things that I would not particularly want to discuss in class) and I didn't particularly enjoy it, but I would be more than happy to have it in a classroom library.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: I AM NOT YOUR YOUR PERFECT MEXICAN DAUGHTER (audiobook) by Erika L. Sánchez

THE HOUSE on MANGO STREET (audiobook) by Sandra Cisneros

Originally Published in 1983.
Read by the author, Sandra Cisneros.
Duration: 2 hours, 18 minutes.
Unabridged

The House on Mango Street is the story of a Hispanic girl named Esperanza who grows up in a little house in a poor neighborhood in Chicago. Her story is told in a series of unrelated vignettes (44 in all) that tell some sort of story about her family life or the neighborhood itself. In some, the main character clearly has no idea of the more adult themes that occur around her, while in others she is very astute and understands the larger implications. 

At first, Esperanza's family intends that the house is going to be a temporary stop on their climb towards economic success in America. But, they never quite are able to move out of this troubled neighborhood and the reader is able to see how the neighborhood affects the lives of everyone around Esperanza as she grows up.

To be fair, the neighborhood is not all bad, but it is a tough place for children to grow up and keep their innocence. Some kids run away, some get married early and try to build some stability (one gets married extremely early.) Esperanza is determined to work her way out of the neighborhood and then come back and help others get out.

I read this book for two reasons:
1) It has a tremendous reputation. 
2) It has been placed on multiple book ban lists and I like to read those books to form my own opinion (unlike a lot of people who ban them.)

My review:

The author, Sandra Cisneros

I found that this book's biggest issue was that it was just boring. It's a 2 hours audiobook and I found myself wanting to listen to anything else at times. I simply could not get into this story. 

I certainly wouldn't ban this book. It has a lot of adult themes, but I think too many sheltered adults don't realize that a lot of kids live very unsheltered lives. This book will come off as very real to a lot of those kids, assuming that they can get past the back that it is a very, very tedious read. This 30+ year teacher would put it in a classroom library or in a school library and support any student wanting to read it. 

Here are two stories about districts that have banned this book - one based in Texas and one based in Florida.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE HOUSE on MANGO STREET by Sandra Cisneros.

YOU SHOULD SEE ME in a CROWN (audiobook) by Leah Johnson

Published in 2020 by Scholastic Audio.

Read by Alaska Jackson.
Duration: 7 hours, 18 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

High School senior Liz Lighty is depending on a $10,000 music scholarship to be able to afford to attend the college she has always wanted to go to.  When she discovers that she doesn't get the scholarship, she's afraid her grandparents will sell their house to pay for her college.

Her high school offers a $10,000 scholarship for the winner of the Prom Queen competition. Enthusiastic band member Liz, supported by her outsider group of friends, joins the competition against all cheerleaders, legacies, and the beautiful people...

My Review:

In a lot of ways, You Should See Me In a Crown is a typical high school ugly duckling story - the underdog great kid goes up against the popular clique.

But, there are some additional nuances that make this more interesting. 

The book is set in the Indianapolis area (Indianapolis is my adopted hometown) and the high school in the book (Campbell) is a play on the real Indianapolis suburb named Carmel. Carmel and its neighbors have had multiple incidents with race, inclusion, book bans, and the like. Remember the Moms for Liberty parent group that published a newsletter with the Adolph Hitler quote? This is that place.

This matters in this book because Liz Lighty is African American and lesbian, like the author. Those two facts, especially the second one, are a big deal.

The Indianapolis Arts Garden, the site of 
the prom in this book.

Readers from the Indianapolis area will appreciate the mentions of local landmarks like Mass Ave, Rick's Café and Boatyard, and the Arts Garden.

The book is interesting because of the issues of race and sexuality, but it is a very good book because Leah Johnson is a very good author. Her characters look like they are the standard high school kids from a teen movie or TV show, but she breathes life in them and makes them stand out. Her descriptions of those first few exciting, confusing and embarrassing days of falling in love ring true and were fun to listen to in this audiobook.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: YOU SHOULD SEE ME in a CROWN (audiobook) by Leah Johnson.

Note: In 2022, the Oklahoma Attorney General announced he was going to review a list of more than 50 books that "several concerned individuals" had submitted top his office rather than going through their local school boards. His office decided to determine if the books were "obscene." Later, he dropped his investigation, but not the recommendation that local school boards take these complaints seriously. Although most of the books on this list have an LGBTQ+ theme, it is a wide-ranging list, including classics like Of Mice and Men, Brave New World, and Lord of the Flies. There is nothing "obscene" in this book. There are no sexual acts beyond a few kisses.

This book was also put on a book ban list in Tennessee. The article has a searchable database because the list has more than 1,100 unique titles.
 

THE COMPLETE MAUS (graphic novel) by Art Spiegelman

 

Originally published in serial form in Raw magazine from 1980-1991.
Originally published in book form in 1991 by Pantheon Books.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1992.

Years ago, the high school where I used to teach had a daily silent reading time. We were encouraged to build a classroom library and I had a great one. Two stand alone shelves (one tall, one short) and a little rug in the corner with a chair. I had a lot of books from a lot of different genres but the star books were Of Mice and Men and the two volume paperback version of Maus. Kids kept on stealing Of Mice and Men (If a kid likes it so much that he doesn't want to return it - fine by me) but so many students read Maus that the paperback binding broke and the pages fell out. It was held together with binder clips and big rubber bands. 

What I remember about that book is that every student reverently took off that ridiculous clip and the big rubber band, spread the pages out and just read. Students who "hated to read" read that book. Afterwards, they carefully put it back together again - in order - when they were done. These two books had power and painful truth. They knew it and they respected it.

I'd forgotten all about Maus, the binder clips, and the big rubber bands until I heard about a school board in Tennessee dropping this book from their curriculum due to rough language, nudity and a suicide. Funny how war, genocide and untreated PTSD from having almost all of your family and friends systematically murdered leads to a bit of cursing.

Missouri joined in as well. School districts banned the book because they think it fits the definition of "explicit sexual material." State law would punish them for exposing minors to "explicit sexual material" even though state law also mandates the teaching of the Holocaust. There is nudity, but it is rare and it is certainly not racy stuff.

The arrival at Auschwitz

The book is the story of the author's father during World War II. He was a recently married Jewish businessman in Poland before World War II. He had a young son. Their community is forced to move, go into urban ghettos and eventually into the death camp at

Auschwitz. Some hide, some run but they almost all end up in the camps. Most of his father's family and friends die, including his little boy - the older brother that the author never knew.

Spiegelman illustrates his father's story as a series of flashbacks. You can see that his father is miserable and his mother killed herself years earlier. 

There are no "people" in the book. The Jews are mice, the Nazis are cats, the Poles are pigs, the French are frogs and the Americans are dogs. I like the last bit since Hitler regularly referred to Americans as a mongrel people.

This is a powerful book - it is also a tough book. The war still reverberates through our world. We can recognize it and educate our children or we can ignore it.

I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE COMPLETE MAUS (graphic novel) by Art Spiegelman.

ANNE FRANK'S DIARY: THE GRAPHIC ADAPTATION (graphic novel) by Anne Frank (author), Ari Folman, and David Polonsky (illustrator)

 

Originally published as a book in 1947.
Graphic novel e-book edition published in 2018 by Pantheon.

Adapted into a graphic novel by Ari Folman.

The Diary of Anne Frank is certainly one of the most famous pieces of literature published in the last 100 years. The book the true diary of a young teen Jewish girl that was written as her family lived in a hidden apartment with two other families in an attempt to hide from the Nazi genocide. Before the war ended someone betrayed the families and Anne and almost everyone else in the apartment died in concentration camps shortly before the Nazi surrender.

A page where Anne compares herself
unfavorably to her sister.

Ari Folman adapted the diary into a graphic novel. In the afterword he notes that this was harder than one might expect. This graphic novel is 160 pages, but if he had simply illustrated the entire text of the diary it would have ended up being more than 3,000 pages! The challenge was to maintain the spirit of the print book while editing it down.

I think the book is beautifully illustrated. The moods, emotions, and simple displays of teen attitude come through loud and clear - and make her come to life.

The graphic novel is excellent, which is why it is too bad that it is on a lot of banned book lists. In Florida, Moms for Liberty asked for the book to be banned because of two scenes described like this by Katie Couric in an article: it features two “sexually explicit” scenes. In the first, Frank walks along a series of nude statues, and in another, she asks a friend if they want to show each other their breasts." The Moms argue that the book does not accurately teach about the Holocaust because of these pages - as if Nazi hatred were only aimed at Jews.

Anne Frank's diary has always been edited to make the story flow better, but it also was edited to take out some embarrassing details about the family. Those edits included Anne Frank's passing thoughts about possibly being interested in women as well as men. In the 1950s this might have been a deal breaker with potential publishers so it was left out. This is ironic considering that gays and lesbians were sent to the camps by the Nazis with just as much enthusiasm as Jews - but, that was the politics of the day.

It turns out that it also the politics of now. A teacher in Texas was fired because those pages were read aloud in her class. 

It must be noted that even if Anne Frank were not Jewish, she would have been sent to the camps for being bisexual.

I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ANNE FRANK'S DIARY: THE GRAPHIC ADAPTATION (graphic novel) by Anne Frank (author), Ari Folman, and David Polonsky (illustrator).

AN ABUNDANCE of KATHERINES (audiobook) by John Green

 

Originally published in 2006.
Published by Listening Library in 2019.
Read by Jeff Woodman.
Duration: 6 hours, 47 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Colin Singleton is a child prodigy who has recently stopped being a child. He has graduated from high school, is preparing to go to a great college but he is unsettled by a couple of things.

Number one: being a child prodigy means that you are potentially an important adult. Colin is aware that it is now time for potential to turn into something - anything - meaningful.

Number two: Colin just got dumped - again. He has dated 19 different girls and all are named Katherine. Technically it is 18 different girls because Katherine 1 is also Katherine 19, but the point is pretty much the same.

So, Colin is wallowing in self-pity when his best friend, a slacker named Hassan, comes to him and suggests that they need to go on a road trip. They head south through Indiana and eventually end up in Gutshot, Tennessee where Colin meets a girl named Lindsey who has only dated a boy named Colin...

My Review:

Despite the 3 star review, I thought this book has several good quotes.

This is a fair to middling audiobook. For the first half of the audiobook, I would have rated it 2 stars out of 5. I kept on listening because I am a fan of John Green (both his books and him generally) and he and I have both adopted the same city as our hometown. 

As the book went on, I bumped it up to a weak 3 stars because it did get better. By the way, I am very aware of the irony of reviewing a John Green book on a 5 star scale considering how much that Green hates assigning stars to things in reviews (check out his excellent collection of essays The Anthropocene Reviewed for more info.)

Part of the problem with this book was the reader Jeff Woodman. He has a perfectly pleasant reading voice and is very clear but - whatever "it" is, he didn't have "it" in my opinion. By the way, this is the reason that Green hates the 5 star system - I am rating the reader based on something that I can't define. We all do this, though. You hear two different bands play the same song and one has "it" and one clearly doesn't. In this case, I may very well have liked the book a little better with a different reader.

My other complaint about this book is Colin's insistence on trying to create a mathematical formula to figure out who is going to dump who in a relationship. I get that only a kid would try to do such a thing, but there were so many tedious scenes describing the development of the formula and discussions of the formula that I got sick of hearing about it. At one point, I thought that Colin had accidentally shot the notebook with the formula with a shotgun and I was so happy to be done with it all. I think it was a convenient thing for Green to use to occupy Colin's time - a sponge to suck up his time while other things were going on. Character A does this, Character B does that and Colin goes into the other room and works on his formula for 3 hours. 

So, while not a bad book, certainly not a great book. So far, I've read 5 of his books. 3 have 5 stars and 2 have 3 stars. That's a pretty good track record.

Update  - in November of 2023 it was announced that the  group Moms for Liberty challenged 300+ books in Florida. This book is one of them. See the entire list of books that the Moms want banished here.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: AN ABUNDANCE of KATHERINES by John Green.

THE GIRL from the SEA (graphic novel) (kindle) by Molly Knox Ostertag

 

Illustrated by the author.
Published in 2021 by Graphix.
Winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Comic/Graphic Novel (2022)

Synopsis:

Morgan Kwon's parents have recently divorced. 15 year old Morgan, her annoying little brother and her mom have moved away from the city to an island just off of mainland Canada.

Morgan seems to be doing pretty well. After all, she has a great group of friends. But, there are struggles. Her little brother has become extra annoying, she misses her dad and she can't wait to get off of this island and go to college and be her true self. 

You see, Morgan has a secret that she is afraid to share with anyone - she's gay and she's afraid her friends and family will reject her if they find out.

It all comes to a head when she meets a very cute girl while swimming one day. There is a more than a spark of romance, but it turns out that this new girl has a secret that dwarfs Morgan's secret!

My review:

This is an absolutely enjoyable coming-of-age story. The publisher recommends grade 7 and higher and I agree with that recommendation. The book has two main plots - Morgan's secret and the new girl's even bigger secret. But, it also has an environmental subplot, a strong family message and a tiny sweet subplot that is sort of hidden throughout. This book contains no nudity and nothing sexual beyond a few kisses.

I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE GIRL from the SEA (graphic novel) (kindle) by Molly Knox Ostertag.

NOTE: I only heard of this book because it was listed in an article about a MAGA parent who is challenging 3,600 books in a county school district in Florida in an effort to, as he describes it, "overwhelm" their challenge procedures. The parent was particularly unhappy about The Girl from the Sea and is quite vocal about it.

MY NAME IS SALLY LITTLE SONG (audiobook) by Brenda Woods

 

Book edition originally published in 2006.
Audiobook published in 2019 by Listening Library.
Read by Asmeret Ghebremichael.
Duration: 3 hours, 0 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

This short piece of historical fiction focuses on a slave family in Georgia in the 1790s. The main character is Sally. She has a brother, a mother and a father. The one thing that this family has going for them is that their owners have a policy of not breaking apart families.

That is the policy until relatives of the owners find themselves struggling financially. In a couple of days, Sally and her brother and 3 other slaves are going to be sent to the other plantation to help it get back on its feet again. 

The family decides to run away together rather than be split apart.

After some discussion with a friendly house slave who has done some traveling with the family, they decide not to head north. They haven't seen a map but they know that the trip across northern Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Maryland to get to Pennsylvania is just too far.

However, rumor has it that if they can make it to Florida (at the time, Florida was owned by Spain), they would be welcome to live with the Seminoles...

My Review:

The author, Brenda Woods

This short book would be an excellent addition to any history classroom or school library. It has compelling characters, provides details but does not wallow in them, and is very honest about early American history from the point of view of slaves and Native Americans. 

There are a variety of characters and they don't all hit the stereotypes. For example, not all of the slaves are sympathetic characters. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: MY NAME IS SALLY LITTLE SONG by Brenda Woods.

Note: I reviewed this book because I read about it an article about Florida book bans in schools. I checked it out and this teacher doesn't find anything objectionable about this book. Here is a link to another article with a list of 176 books that were banned by a Florida county. 

DEAR MARTIN (audiobook) by Nic Stone

 

Published by Listening Library in 2017.
Read by Dion Graham,
Duration: 4 hours, 32 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Justyce is a African-American scholarship boarding school student originally from a rough neighborhood.  He attends an elite, almost entirely white prep school in Atlanta. He is a senior and a fantastic student who is clearly headed to a top university once he graduates. Everything isn't perfect, but it is going very, very well.

One evening Justyce gets a phone call from an on-again-off-again girlfriend. She is clearly drunk and is talking about driving home. She's not too far away so he walks to her car, gets into an argument with her and struggles with her a bit for the keys while maneuvering her into the backseat where she pukes and passes out. While he is buckling her in to take her home a police officer pulls up and completely misinterprets the scene for a carjacking and a kidnapping. 

From the officer's point of view, it looks suspicious if you go with all of the worst stereotypes. You've got a young black male in a hoodie and a white female (actually she's mixed race, but very light-skinned) being forced into the back of a very nice car in the middle of the night.

This officer is definitely a man who believes in stereotypes. He arrests Justyce, cuffs him and refuses to listen to anything Justyce says. 

While Justyce knows this type of thing happens - but deep down inside he is shocked because it's never happened to him and he didn't think it would happen to a kid like him.

Justyce decides to write out his thoughts on race, racism, policing and life in general in a series of letters to Martin Luther King over the course of the school year, thus the source of the title of the book.

My Review:

Thematically, this book is very similar to the better known YA book The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. They were published in the same year and are both excellent. The book presents a series of events that are unlikely to all happen to the same character, but do happen all across the country.

The author Nic Stone (left) and the reader Dion Graham.

One thing I very much liked about the book is that it is not literally a black and white book. There is a lot of gray area in this book. All of the white characters aren't racists, all of the black characters aren't saints. Some of the black characters are racist, some the of white characters are pretty saintly. There is also character growth. 

One of the reasons that I decided to listen to this audiobook was a ridiculous news story that I read. A teacher in North Carolina was fired for teaching this book after having sought approval to teach it from the school's administrator. Turns out it possibly violates one of those ridiculous MAGA anti-CRT laws (CRT - the topic that many people are scared of but cannot define.) Not only did the teacher get approval, the principal was enthusiastic about the use of the novel.

Here is a quote from an ABC News story about this case:

Davis claimed that ahead of Black History Month, Gray had a "very intentional conversation" with Rock about what would be an "appropriate curriculum" and that she "specifically said to Mr. Gray that ["Dear Martin"] would be a good book to teach."

What do I think of the audiobook? It is an emotionally engaging book that drags the reader right into the story. It is an excellent book paired with an excellent reader - Dion Graham.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: DEAR MARTIN by Nic Stone.

Update: Dear Martin was also placed on a massive book ban list in Florida.

YES PLEASE (audiobook) by Amy Poehler

Published in 2014 by HarperAudio.
Read by the author, Amy Poehler.
Duration: 7 hours, 31 minutes.
Unabridged.

Amy Poehler tells about her life in this memoir. She is best known for her work on Saturday Night Live and her starring role in the NBC series Parks and Recreation. I love Parks and Rec so I decided to give her memoir a listen.

She starts with her early life, her first jobs, college and finally discusses her pre-SNL career. From time to time she has guest readers come along and contribute audiobook-only material. Seth Meyers was no surprise, but Kathleen Turner, Patrick Stewart and Carol Burnett were. Her parents each read their own short chapters. It gave the audiobook a bit of a podcast feel.

Most of the book was quite enjoyable, but there were too many instances of TMI (too much information.) For example, I now know Amy Poehler's feelings about men performing oral sex on her. I didn't need to know that. 

The section about SNL was fun. The chapter on Parks and Rec was even better.

The section on her divorce from Will Arnett is very depressing and surprisingly fact free. That was fine by me - I am not her friend and I don't need to know any details (I wish she'd have kept this in mind when discussing oral sex!) The next couple of chapters meander around with no energy until she moves on to other topics. I get that - divorce is a depressing topic. 

In the last third of the audiobook there is an extended rant inspired by a fan who drops off a script with her while she is riding on a train (or maybe a plane.) She indignantly goes on and on about how this man is discounting all of the work she did as she climbed the career ladder by simply dropping off a script and leapfrogging his way to the top. Who does this no-talent lazy bum think he think he is? 

It felt so different than the rest of the book - it was unpleasantly jarring. I felt like I had somehow stepped behind the scenes and witnessed Poehler having a bad moment after a very long, very hard day. Then, I remember that this was not a random "bad moment" - it was well considered and thought out since it was written, read by editors before it was printed and read by Poehler for the audiobook.

The book is 9 years old so there are lots of more recent things that a fan would like to hear about that just cannot be there. Also, all of her frequent positive comments about Louis C.K. did not age well based on subsequent revelations about the creepy sexual things he did in front of female comics. Every time Poehler mentioned him I wondered if she was also a victim.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: YES PLEASE (audiobook) by Amy Poehler.

This book was banned in a school district in Florida during the 2023-2024 school year. I assume it was because of the oral sex comments that I have previously mentioned. Here is the link to the article with a pdf of the very extensive list of banned books.