8. Attack of the Black Rectangles by A. S. King

listened on Audible

2022
272 pgs.
Middle Grade CRF
Finished 1/23/2023
Goodreads rating: 4.26
My rating: 5
Setting: Contemporary PA - I'm guessing a touristy place in Lancaster County, like Intercourse, though the Amish are not mentioned

My comments: Excellent. When three friends are confronted with blocked out words in their sixth grade literature circle book (The Devil's Arithmetic - a really great book in itself), they begin a campaign against censorship. A timely topic that includes a middle school boy dealing with his very odd, untrustworthy father and the usual pre-teenage angst about friendships with girls. My favorite character is the ex-Vietnam vet grandad who practices mindfulness.

Goodreads synopsis:  Award-winning author Amy Sarig King takes on censorship and intolerance in a novel she was born to write.

Everyone in town knows and fears Ms. Laura Samuel Sett. She is the town watchdog, always on the lookout for unsavory words and the unsavory people who use them.

She is also Mac's sixth-grade teacher.

Mac and his friends are outraged when they discovered that their class copies of Jane Yolen's THE DEVIL'S ARITHMETIC have certain works blacked out. Mac has been raised by his mom and grandad to call out things that are wrong, so he and his friends head to the principal's office to protest the censorship. Her response isn't reassuring -- so the protest grows.