By Cyrisse Jaffee

Kudos to Delacorte Press for publishing not one but two middle-grade books about the dangers of book banning.

Not Another Banned Book by Dana Alison Levy. Delacorte Press, 2024

Same Page by Elly Swartz. Delacorte Press, 2025

Each of the stories features a feisty girl as the main character. Both books use friendship as a secondary plot, school as the backdrop, and use younger siblings for heartfelt and/or comic relief. Luckily, the two books are different enough for each to deserve shelf space.

In Not Another Banned Book, Molly Claremont is a super smart 8th-grader and the class president, among other achievements. She is a big fan of the school’s librarian, Ms. Lewiston, and the book club she runs. Molly is also surrounded by a group of faithful and talented friends: Mik (one of 10 Black kids in their grade), athletic superstars Kait and her younger brother Alex, and Alice (“awesomely weird”).

At the book club meetings, kids are free to debate, argue, and delve into complex issues — race, drugs, sex — and diverse characters. But the club is disbanded when someone complains about the books as “inappropriate,” “anti-American,” and “triggering.” Molly and her friends vow to fight back. But none of their protests go as planned.

Molly is also struggling at home. She is still dealing with the death of her older brother two years earlier; Seth had been ill since birth. Molly is shocked when she learns that her parents are considering selling their home, since it contains so many memories of Seth. To make matters worse, the realtor is the mother of Molly’s former best friend, Amelia, who now seems to hate Molly. Despite therapy and the adorable antics of her little sister, Jules, Molly feels sad and alone.

The book is jam-packed with lots of dialogue, subplots, and other details that help place it squarely in today’s society but also sometimes overwhelm the storytelling. There are also some highly unrealistic plot twists: Mik’s “all black, all-middle-school death-metal thrasher band” gets a spot on a national late-night talk show; Molly discovers the source of Amelia’s hostility (Amelia is in love with a girl but ashamed of it); the gang’s hashtag (@Read or Die Stupid) goes viral, and more. Yet readers will cheer Molly on when she delivers a rousing graduation speech defending the importance of books that reflect kids’ real lives. Perhaps kids will be inspired to defend free speech when their school confronts book banning.

A detailed author’s note includes statistics about the alarming and rising incidences of book banning, almost half of which are due to “LGBTQ+ content,” and provides some helpful organizations. (Interestingly, some of the “approved” books in the story that replace the banned books have themselves been banned, such as The Catcher in the Rye, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and Huckleberry Finn.)

Same Page is aimed at a slightly younger audience. Bess Stein, a 12-year-old 6th-grader, lives in a world that seems fairly idyllic: Her father owns the cozy neighborhood café and bakes amazing pecan pies, and her mother runs a stable where she does equine therapy. Bess has a favorite horse named Lola, a floppy dog named Barnaby, and a sweet little brother named Avi.

However, Bess is also dealing with loss. She misses her beloved great-grandmother who died a year earlier. Bess proudly wears the Jewish star that belonged to Nana. Her parents are together after a separation, but Bess still worries that the marriage is fragile. And although Bess is glad she’s made a new friend, June (who happens to have a cute older brother named Knox), she’s not sure how she feels about the fact that Emmy, her longtime BFF, has also made a new friend named Zee.

As the story opens, Bess has been elected class president, with June as vice-president. One of Bess’s campaign promises was to install a book vending machine, and she and the new librarian, Mr. Jasper, fill it up. But when someone complains about the book choices, Bess is horrified to discover it was June’s mother. Even more upsetting is that June seems to agree with her mother — or at least she’s too afraid to disagree. Their friendship splinters and June starts hanging out with a new crowd. No matter how many “kindness meditations” Bess does, she can’t seem to figure out how to fix things.

Bess is invited to join the Book Warriors, a group run by a librarian from a different school. She explains to Bess, “I started this group to fight for kids’ rights to read the books they want. The ones that represent their lives, their families, their experiences, their histories, and their hearts.”

When Bess makes a speech at a school board meeting, the responses to the speech are mixed. June’s mother is openly hostile. Bess’s dismay is compounded by the disappearance of Barnaby, who runs off during a thunderstorm. Worst of all, she overhears an antisemitic remark made by one of June’s new so-called friends. Bess must find the courage she learned from Nana, who survived the Holocaust, to stand up and confront both hate and ignorance.

The book’s happy ending is a bit too neat and tidy. June finally rejects her mother’s beliefs; she not only finds her voice, but Barnaby as well. The banned books, now deemed acceptable by the school board, are reinstated. How we wish for this kind of resolution in real life! But Swartz demonstrates, as she did in Hidden Truths, a sensitive understanding of kids, families, and community. Molly’s feelings and struggles are realistic, and kids will enjoy getting to know her — and relish her victory in the end.

Note: Kids may be familiar with Ban This Book by Alan Gratz (Macmillan, 2017), which has a similar plot and is also aimed at middle-grade readers. Ironically, the book itself was banned in Florida in 2024, on the charge that it portrayed school boards in a bad light (!). In this story, it’s an African-American girl who decides to fight book banning by creating her own secret library of banned books. Even though the book is only eight years old, it occasionally feels dated and some of the references might strike readers as insensitive. (For instance, the narrator says, “Indian Captive [a book by Lois Lenski first published in 1941] is pretty great too, even though Mary Jemison has to live in an Indian village. But I would rather live with Indian kidnappers than live with my two stupid younger sisters.”)

Cyrisse Jaffee is a former children’s and YA librarian, children’s book editor, and a creator of educational materials for WGBH. She holds a master’s degree in Library Science from Simmons College and lives in Newton, MA.