In her latest, Mac lives in a town where adults keep everyone safe from “unsavory” words, thoughts, and people. No accidents, no crime, no Halloween, no junk food. No girls in shorts. The perfect town. And the person most adults thank for this is Ms. Laura Samuel Sett, Mac’s new sixth grade teacher.
At first, Ms. Sett actually seems like she’ll be the perfect teacher, too. Promising freedom, respect, and little homework in exchange for good behavior, she hands out copies of The Devil’s Arithmetic, by Jane Yolen. It’s an award-winning book about the horrors of the Holocaust that Mac immediately becomes engrossed in. But, before long, he and the rest of his reading group realize that two “ugly black rectangle[s]” cover some words of text in each of two difficult but deeply affecting scenes, and it’s hard to imagine “what could be worse” that someone doesn’t want them to read.
Mac, his best friend Denis, and possible-crush Marci find a used copy in a bookstore in town, so they learn that a phrase and an entire sentence which include the words “breasts” and “undeveloped chest” have been censored. As Marci indignantly points out, she’s in sixth grade and “old enough to have actual breasts.” Mac, Denis, and Marci vow to find out who did this and, when the principal smiles and treats them like kids doing “something cute,” they get impatient, they get angry, and they get motivated.
King’s tightly-focused story is about learning to stand up and speak out but it also contains plenty of regular sixth grade stuff to ground it. There’s lots of wry humor here, and I found Mac likable, despite his assertions that he is not! ATTACK OF THE BLACK RECTANGLES feels like a book of its time, one that needs to be read widely for its message but also—since it’s, first and foremost, a good story, and well-written—just for the heck of it.
--Lynn
(Scholastic generously provided a copy of this book. Opinions are my own.)
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