Cheers to the Rebel Librarian!

Thank you to #kidlitexchange and @randomhousekids for a review copy of this book that is being published on September 18, 2018. All opinions are my own.

Some books just beg to be read. Property of the Rebel Librarian is a book that will appeal to any book lover, librarian, or teacher. It left me cheering for June and her friends and shaking my head at some ridiculous ideas that people have about books.

June Harper loves to read. She looks forward to her time going in to the school library and chatting about books with Ms. Bradshaw. But when her over-protective parents find her with a book that they don’t approve of, they take their disapproval to extremes. Soon they have taken away all of June’s books so they can read them themselves, have gotten the librarian suspended, and start a massive censorship issue at the school including a rule of no reading any book that isn’t pre-approved.

With very similar issues as Ban This Book, Allison Varnes takes on the idea of censorship and kids fighting back. There is this mood of extreme helicopter parent that refuses to let their kids grow up and learn for themselves. It is rare for anyone to take it to this extreme, but books will get banned for a sorts of reasons. Many people don’t want even the Harry Potter books to be readily accessible because they are about witchcraft. Some parents look down on the graphic novels being published today, not realizing the powerful stories some of them tell. The truth is, kids should read what they want to read. They are pretty good at self-censoring and will stop reading a book if it isn’t interesting to them or if a concept is beyond them.

I loved June and her friends, especially the group of friends that she never knew existed for her. In wanting to still be able to read what they wanted, June becomes the Rebel Librarian, providing reading material to a wide array of students.

While the book goes to some extremes and is over the top at times, it still touches this want-to-be librarian at heart. Not a perfect book, but still one that I absolutely adored reading and would encourage tons of people to read, even if they just enjoy the power June realizes she has.