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Our Fight for Readers' Rights
by Ashley Hope Pérez
Book Reviewed by:A dazzling YA anthology that spotlights the transformative power of books while equipping teens to fight for the freedom to read, featuring the voices of 15 diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators.
Books are disappearing from shelves across the country.
What does this mean for authors, illustrators, and—most crucially—for young readers?
This bold collection of fiction, memoir, poetry, graphic narratives, essays, and other genres explores book bans through various lenses, and empowers teens to fight back. From moving personal accounts to clever comebacks aimed at censorship, fifteen legendary YA authors and illustrators confront the high-stakes question of what is lost when books are kept from teens.
Hey reader,
I am so excited you are holding this book! I have been dreaming of an anthology like this since 2021, when my novel Out of Darkness became one of the most banned books in the US. It has been removed again and again from school libraries like yours, targeted by misguided adults who rarely bother to read the books they criticize. Book banners went hard after Out of Darkness, but they have also targeted many others. Thousands of books. Books carefully selected by trained librarians. Books that readers like you have a right to access.
I have watched, often feeling helpless, as hundreds of books disappeared from libraries like the one in the Texas high school where I used to teach. I took my students to the library each week, and the conversations we had inspired me to become the writer I am. I have shed a lot of tears, thinking of the books that today's teens will never find.
But I haven't just been crying. I've also been doing everything I can to find creative ways to connect ...
Through a variety of forms—essays, short stories, poetry, and comics—these YA authors explore the issues around book bans and censorship (young adult fiction is the most frequently banned genre in public schools and libraries)... Banned Together is an excellent, incredible resource that entertains and teaches in equal measure. It is full of unique authorial voices that represent many different cultures and life experiences. But perhaps its greatest gift is the wonderful introduction it offers to some truly brilliant authors...continued
Full Review
(1096 words)
(Reviewed by Sara Fiore).
Amanda Jones, author of That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America
This brilliant collection of essays, poems, and stories encapsulates the tragic push by extremists to ban books in the United States, but also gives hope to those who believe in libraries and human rights. It has been said that books save lives, and this book proves just that. It is inherent that we push for the freedom to read, the first amendment, and the fact that libraries are for everyone. Malinda Lo, National Book Award Winner and New York Times-bestselling author of Last Night at the Telegraph Club
Banned Together is an insightful, moving, and important resource for teens and all readers who are fighting the alarming rise in censorship across the U.S. It is filled with hard-won wisdom from authors whose books have been banned and who have themselves been targeted by right-wing hate. Give this to every young person to better equip them to stand up for their rights and their communities.
When speaking about book bans, it rarely takes long for the 2019 graphic memoir Gender Queer to enter the conversation. Its author Maia Kobabe, who is also the first contributing author to Banned Together, never imagined that writing a memoir about eir experience growing up and coming out as nonbinary and asexual would lead to national celebrity as one of the most banned authors in the country.
Kobabe, who uses Spivak pronouns (e/eir/em), was writing the book for emself as much as for the many other people in the world struggling to find their own identities. "There wasn't this language for it," Kobabe said in a 2022 New York Times interview. "I just thought, I am wanting to come out as nonbinary, and I am struggling with how to ...
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