THIS BOOK IS BANNED

A zany, fourth wall–breaking exploration of book banning.

A note before the title page defines censorship as “when one group of people decides that no one should be allowed to read a certain book, and they try to remove that book from libraries and schools.” In the exhaustingly long text that follows, an off-the-page narrator slowly erases everything that happens in this not-a-story: Giraffes have to go because the hippos resent them for eating all the leaves; avocados are eliminated because someone thinks they’re “gross”; and a roller-skating robot is edited out because it’s deemed dangerous. In one scene, involving a birthday party for a brown-skinned child named Yasmeen, we learn that conflict over cake slices led to the restriction of birthday parties altogether. There’s no coherent plot aside from the ongoing redactions. Wacky, energetic illustrations are the selling point of this otherwise-confusing tale, which never quite settles into something readable. The opening note mentions that “everyone should be allowed to share their opinions (as long as they’re not hurting others),” which ignores the arguments of book banners who regularly argue that they only want to restrict harmful materials. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

High-key fun at the expense of real issues.