Banned Together: Our Fight for Readers’ Rights is a vibrant, invaluable handbook for young adults about book bans, why they’re happening, and how they can be challenged. Editor Ashley Hope Pérez, whose novel Out of Darkness became one of the most banned books in the United States, has assembled an expertly curated collection of personal essays, poems, graphic art and fiction from numerous award-winning YA authors and illustrators.
Early on, a list of frequently asked questions about book bans notes that “from July 2021 to June 2023, PEN America documented a total of 5,894 book bans across 41 states and 247 public school districts. These book bans restricted access to the work of 2,598 authors, illustrators, and translators.” Pérez writes in her introduction, “This collection says NO WAY. We’re bringing those writers’ voices back to readers.”
In both style and substance, Banned Together is full of appeal. Each piece opens with a portrait of its contributor by illustrator Debbie Fong (whose Next Stop was one of BookPage’s Best Middle Grade Books of 2024), followed by a short bio. These smiling portraits reinforce the feeling of a shared conversation between readers and writers. Many of the pieces are moving and personal, guaranteed to help struggling teenagers and deepen empathy and compassion. Elana K. Arnold, for instance, writes about a sexual assault she endured in college and how it affected an old friendship decades later. Equally moving is Bill Konigsberg’s essay about how he was groomed for several years by his high school English teacher. He notes, “What I wouldn’t have given, as a teenager, to encounter a single book that explored the feelings of another gay teen. To have known that I wasn’t alone in how I felt, and to have read a story where Mr. Thomas’s conduct was called out for what it was: predatory behavior.”
Banned Together is also chock-full of resources, including suggested reading lists on topics such as Black History and “Anthologies Book Banners Don’t Want You to Read.” Book Banning tactics are not only explained, but also countered with “A Teen To-Do List: Fight Book Bans,” which suggests strategies such as attending school board meetings, voting, writing letters and making a Little Free Library featuring banned books. High school activists are profiled, such as Christopher Lau, who started a YouTube channel, “Unban Coolies,” to advocate for diverse books when one of his favorites was targeted—Coolies, a picture book about Chinese railroad workers in 1865.
This is a must-have anthology for libraries, as well as an invaluable personal resource for high school readers.
