Ban This Book Read online

  “You’ll do it?” I asked. “You’ll make us up fake covers for all of our books?”

  “Yeah,” M.J. said. “But it won’t work to have the same cover for all of them. How many books we talking about?”

  “Twenty-seven,” I told him.

  “And more coming,” Rebecca said. “We hope.”

  M.J. whistled. “I better get started. But I’m going to need some titles.”

  “Real ones?” Danny asked.

  “We better not,” I said. “If I realized this wasn’t a real cover for The Lightning Thief, a teacher might too. We need some fake titles.”

  M.J. opened a word processing document. “I’m all ears.”

  “Right now?” Rebecca said.

  “You want covers, I need titles,” M.J. said.

  How do you come up with a book title? How do authors come up with book titles? I’d never even thought about it. Book titles always had something to do with what was inside. So how could we come up with book titles for books that weren’t real?

  Danny combed his hair away from his eyes with his fingers again, and I smiled.

  “The Boy Who Fell in Love with His Hair,” I said.

  M.J. cackled, and started typing.

  “Hey! That’s not funny,” Danny said. He flicked his hair, then realized what he was doing and blushed. “Here’s one for you: Hair Sucker.”

  I shrank. I didn’t know anybody ever noticed me chewing on my braids!

  “Naturally Curly,” Rebecca said, pretending to primp her black curly hair.

  M.J. laughed. “All right, all right. They can’t all be about hair.”

  “We can’t say ‘sucker’ either, or they’ll ban that too,” Rebecca said.

  “The Girl Who Only Loved Books,” Danny said.

  M.J. nodded. “I like that. I like that. Keep ’em coming.”

  “Jessica Rogers, Girl Lawyer,” Rebecca said.

  I shook my head. “Too close to something else.”

  Rebecca brightened. “Really? What?”

  I shook my head again to let her know she really didn’t want to read it.

  “The Mystery of the Blue Parrot,” I said.

  “The Seventeenth Princess,” Rebecca said.

  “Wet Dog Smell.”

  “Mr. Bear Opens a Bank Account.”

  “I Think I Can See My House from Here.”

  “They Were Already Dead.”

  “Smell My Finger.”

  “Tales of a Fourth Grade Zombie.”

  “Robot Super Ninja! No. Super Robot Ninja. No—Super Ninja Robot Man.”

  “Danny, it doesn’t matter! It’s not a real book!”

  “I want it to sound good!”

  We went back and forth, laughing as we came up with titles, with M.J. typing all the time. We were having so much fun, Mr. Deacon had to tell us to hold it down. I popped up from behind the computer to signal to him we would be quiet, and saw someone in the next row of computers staring right back at me.

  Trey McBride.

  He waved at me with one hand. His other hand was on the lid of a scanner. The light inside glided back and forth, and he opened it, took his sketch book out, and flipped it over to scan the other side.

  I dropped back behind the row of computers, where the other three were swallowing their laughter so hard they were crying.

  “Guys,” I whispered. “We have to hold it down.”

  Rebecca nodded, tears rolling down her face. Danny let out something like a honk.

  “I’m serious!” I hissed. “Trey’s in the next row over! He probably heard everything we said.”

  That got Rebecca’s and Danny’s attention. They stopped laughing and peeked over the top of the row.

  “Who’s Trey?” M.J. asked.

  “The son of the lady who banned all these books,” I told him. But was that all he was? Her son? Or was he her spy too?

  “All right. I still need more titles,” M.J. said.

  “I’ve got one,” I said. “How about, Friend or Foe?”

  Tra-la-la!

  I bounced over to the door where Rebecca and Danny were already in line. Today was the day of Dav Pilkey’s author visit! I didn’t really like his books, but I’d never met a real live author before. I also had a book of his that I’d just bought for the B.B.L.L. tucked away under my shirt. I wanted to get it autographed. Mr. Vaughn led us to the cafeteria, where we sat in a big half-circle with the rest of the fourth grade. Mrs. Jones stood in the middle of the circle at the projector cart with a man I guessed was Mr. Pilkey. He was white, medium-sized, and not too old, with short brown hair and a flowery Hawaiian shirt. He smiled at something Mrs. Jones said to him, and then she called for our attention.

  “All right, fourth graders. I’m very pleased to introduce an author whose books many of you have read and enjoyed. I know I have. Dav Pilkey”—Mrs. Jones said his name like “Dave,” even though it was spelled “Dav”—“is the author of more than fifty books, most of which he also illustrated, including The Dumb Bunnies, Ricky Ricotta, and of course Captain Underpants. He’s also the winner of a Caldecott Honor for The Paperboy, and a number of reader’s choice awards around the country.”

  That last part Mrs. Jones said after Principal Banazewski came in the room to stand by the door, I noticed.

  “I’m sure Mr. Pilkey will tell you lots more about his life and his books, so I’ll turn things over to him. Let’s give a big Shelbourne Elementary welcome to Mr. Dav Pilkey!” she said.

  Everybody cheered, mostly just for the sake of being able to clap and yell at school, but I cheered because I was really happy he was here.

  Mr. Pilkey showed slides of things he had drawn when he was a kid, and told us how he was always getting in trouble at school and getting sent out into the hall to sit by himself. I glanced over at Principal Banazewski when he said that, and she didn’t look too happy. The kids around me were all loving it though. Mr. Pilkey was funny, and everybody was laughing. Then Mr. Pilkey talked about when he drew his first comics, and how they weren’t spelled right, and didn’t look as good as he can draw now, and how none of that mattered because they were a lot of fun and made his friends laugh. You don’t have to spell well or be great at grammar to be a writer, he told us, and you don’t have to be able to draw perfectly to be an artist. Then he gave examples of famous artists who broke the rules and painted houses upside down, and famous writers who didn’t use the right spelling or grammar. Some of the teachers didn’t like that so much either.

  It wasn’t until Mr. Pilkey was in college that a teacher saw his drawings and told him he should be writing and drawing books for kids. That was how he became a kids’ book author. He finished his talk, showed us how to draw a picture of Captain Underpants, and asked us if we had any questions. I put my hand up, but so did a lot of other kids. The questions they asked were dumb.

  “Did you write all those books?”

  “How much money do you make?”

  “Where do you get your ideas?”

  “I like to draw comics too!” (Which wasn’t even a question.)

  “Do you know any famous authors?”

  “Can you draw Batman?”

  And then he called on me.

  My heart was racing as I asked, “What do you think about your books being banned from our library?”

  The room got very quiet, and I tried very hard not to look at Principal Banazewski.

  Mr. Pilkey smiled. “Well, I wish they were on the shelves, where everybody could read them,” he said. “I think it’s important that libraries be a place where you can find all kinds of books. Good ones, bad ones, funny ones, serious ones. Every person should be free to read whatever they want, whenever they want, and not have to explain to anyone else why we like it, or why we think it’s valuable. I hope you all get a chance to read my books someday.”

  I smiled, my heart still thumping so loud in my chest I thought everyone could hear it. The one copy of Captain Underpants I’d bought before the author visit
was going to be checked out forever! I looked over at Principal Banazewski again. She had her arms folded, and was glaring. But not at Mr. Pilkey, and not at me. She was glaring at Mrs. Jones.

  People asked more questions (mostly dumb ones), and then Mrs. Jones said we were out of time. Everybody cheered again to thank Mr. Pilkey for being here, and the teachers started dismissing us by class.

  “Mr. Vaughn! Mr. Vaughn, can I go and meet the author?” I begged.

  He nodded. “Come right back to class afterward,” he told me. I grabbed Rebecca and Danny without asking if they could come too and hurried across the room to where Mrs. Jones stood with Mr. Pilkey. Mrs. Jones hugged me while we waited for a couple of kids from another class to be done showing their comics to Mr. Pilkey.

  “My little rebel,” Mrs. Jones said to me.

  Rebel? Me?

  The two boys who had drawn the comics were finally called away by their teacher, and we got to say hello.

  That’s when I realized I couldn’t say anything to him about the B.B.L.L. Not with Mrs. Jones standing there. And that’s all I’d come to talk about.

  Rebecca, Danny, and I just stood there smiling up at him. For a long time. He smiled back like he was waiting for us to say something, but after a while his smile began to falter.

  “So … do any of you guys like to draw?” Mr. Pilkey asked us.

  We all shook our heads.

  “Oh. Do you like to write?”

  We all shook our heads.

  Mr. Pilkey laughed. “Well, you like to read at least, I hope.”

  “Oh yeah,” Rebecca said. “You have no idea.”

  A student tripped over the cord to the projector cart, and Mrs. Jones hurried away to take care of it. Finally! I looked around once to make sure no one else was watching, and pulled the Captain Underpants book out from under my shirt.

  “Will you sign this?” I asked Mr. Pilkey.

  He looked surprised, and took the book from me. He looked even more surprised when he saw the cover. “‘Smell My Finger’?” he said. The cover had a picture of a kid with a stinky finger, and another kid passed out on the ground beside him.

  “That’s just what’s on the outside,” I told Mr. Pilkey, and I opened to the book to show him what was inside: The Adventures of Captain Underpants.

  “Ohhh,” he said. He flipped through it, and found the envelope I’d pasted in the back with the checkout card in it. “Oh,” he said. He looked again at the fake cover. “Who did the art?”

  “Our friend M.J. He’s in fifth grade,” Danny said.

  “Tell him I said it’s great. I should write a real book called Smell My Finger.” He looked around to see if anybody was looking. “So I’m guessing your teachers don’t know you have this?”

  We shook our heads.

  “I see.” He took a Sharpie from his pocket and opened the book to a front page. “Anybody in particular I should make it out to?”

  “The B.B.L.L.,” Danny said.

  “B.B.L.L.?” he asked. He wrote it in the book—“To the B.B.L.L.”—and drew a quick sketch of Captain Underpants saying, “Tra-la-la!” under his signature. “Do I want to know what B.B.L.L. stands for?” he asked as he handed it back.

  I stuffed the book up under my shirt. “Probably not,” I said.

  “All right. Well, keep reading, you guys. And don’t get into too much trouble.”

  Mrs. Jones came back. “Mr. Pilkey, when you’re done with these three, I have one more student for you to meet.”

  I almost squeaked. Mrs. Jones had brought Trey McBride to see the author! Why!? I sucked in my stomach, praying he couldn’t see the book under my shirt.

  “We have to get back to class!” I said. I grabbed Rebecca and Danny and ran off so fast Mr. Pilkey barely had time to call out “Bye!” to us.

  A Present

  The Adventures of Captain Underpants never made it to the Banned Books Locker Library. It was checked out before I even got back to class. And it stayed checked out. With a waiting list. I was going to have to save up and buy the rest of them now. I might even have to read it myself.

  That afternoon, from my spot in the corner of the library, I watched as Mrs. Jones thanked Mr. Pilkey and helped him get ready to go. He told her he’d had a great time, and thanked her for fighting the good fight. He spotted me watching from the corner, and I ducked back behind The London Eye Mystery. When I peeked out again, he had pulled something out of his bag and was whispering something to Mrs. Jones. She looked back at me with a curious expression on her face. Mr. Pilkey’s ride to the airport arrived, and he and Mrs. Jones shook hands and said good-bye.

  When he was gone, Mrs. Jones called me up to the front desk.

  “Mr. Pilkey was very impressed with you, Amy Anne,” Mrs. Jones told me. She had that same curious expression on her face, like she was trying to figure something out. “In fact, he left you a present.”

  A present?

  Mrs. Jones looked around the same way I had in the cafeteria to make sure no one was watching, and then brought a boxed set of books up from beneath her desk.

  It was every single Captain Underpants book there was. Twelve books.

  “For me?” I said.

  Mrs. Jones watched me closely. “He said you’d know what to do with them.”

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. This was the biggest single donation in the history of the Banned Books Locker Library!

  “I do,” I said, and I scooped them up.

  “Amy Anne,” Mrs. Jones said. “You know not to show these around at school, right?”

  I nodded, already thinking about how to get in touch with M.J. as soon as possible.

  We were going to need a lot more fake covers.

  The Eyes Have It

  The very next day, Mrs. Spencer and her friends went through the stacks, looking at every single book.

  Mrs. Jones stood a few feet from them, watching them with her arms crossed on her big, blue, polka-dotted dress as they flipped through books looking for anything they didn’t like. But there was nothing she could do. Behind them on a table was a tower of books removed for “further review.”

  I guess Mrs. Spencer didn’t like Mrs. Jones’s author visit stunt very much.

  That afternoon, I called an emergency meeting of the B.B.L.L. board during language arts. Rebecca and Danny and I got library passes and sat at one of the study tables. All around us, the shelves had big holes in them where Mrs. Spencer and her friends had taken books away.

  “We have to do something,” I told them.

  “What?” Rebecca said.

  “We have to get copies of all the books they’re taking off the shelves,” Danny said.

  “Where would we put all of them? This is way more than would fit in Amy Anne’s locker,” Rebecca said.

  “My locker,” Danny said. “Your locker. We can find room.”

  “But we don’t have enough money to buy them all, and we never will,” Rebecca said. “Not even if we had a bake sale every day. Unless Amy Anne can get every author to donate copies like Dav Pilkey.”

  I sucked on a braid, thinking. “There has to be another way,” I said.

  “What about it?” Rebecca asked Danny. “You’re head of acquisitions.”

  Danny combed his hair with his fingers. “Well, I actually do have an idea. I know where we can get a copy of every single book taken off the shelves. For free, even.”

  “Where?”

  Danny nodded at the big glass windows that separated Mrs. Jones’s office from the rest of the library. I frowned until I saw what he was talking about—the shelf in the back corner of the office where Mrs. Jones kept all the books she’d pulled off the shelves.

  Rebecca gasped. “You mean, steal them?”

  “It’s not stealing,” Danny said. “They’re library books. The whole reason they’re here in the first place is to loan out to kids. So we’re just borrowing them, right?”

  I felt slightly sick at the thought of sneaking into Mr
s. Jones’s office and taking something, even if it would mean we had every book Mrs. Spencer banned.

  Danny could see we weren’t convinced. “Look, Mrs. Jones bought those books so any kid could read them. That’s what we’re going to do with them—let any kid read them. She would want us to!”

  “So why don’t we just ask her for them?” Rebecca said.

  “Because she can’t give them to us,” I said. “Not without losing her job. The school board told her not to, and she has to do what the school board says.” I stared at the books.

  “We can’t take all of them, or Mrs. Jones’d notice,” Danny said.

  “We don’t need all of them,” I said. “We already have half of them.”

  “I can’t believe we’re even considering this!” Rebecca said. “Forget suing us. Theft is a misdemeanor!”

  “Does that mean we could go to jail?” I asked.

  “Well, no. Not for stealing a few books. Restitution and community service, maybe.”

  “What’s restitution?” Danny asked.

  “We have to return the books or pay for them,” Rebecca explained. “And, it would very likely go down on our permanent record. Which could mean we don’t get in to college.”

  Danny flicked his hair back. “I’m okay with all that.”

  “Danny!” Rebecca said.

  I chewed on my braid. Stealing was bad. I knew that. I hadn’t stolen a thing since that lollipop when I was little.

  But banning books was worse.

  “I make a motion to borrow the books we don’t already have in the B.B.L.L. from Mrs. Jones’s office,” I said.

  “Second!” Danny said.

  “All those in favor?” I asked.

  “Eye!” Danny said, pulling an eyelid down with a finger.

  I looked at Rebecca.

  “You don’t need my yes,” she said. “You’ve already got enough votes.”

  “You don’t have to help if you don’t want to,” I told her.

  Rebecca sighed. “Well, if we get in trouble, I do know a good lawyer. Aye.”

  “The eyes have it!” Danny said, standing. “Let’s do this.”

  “What, now?” Rebecca said.

  “Sure,” he said. “What are we waiting for? Helen to come?”