It all started the day Amy Anne Ollinger tried to check out her favourite book in the whole world, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler , from the school library. That's when Mrs. Jones, the librarian, told her the bad news: her favourite book was banned! All because a classmate's mum thought the book wasn't appropriate for kids to read.Amy Anne decides to fight back by starting a secret banned-books library out of her locker. The battle of the books escalates when she engineers a campaign to challenge every book in the school library. Because once you ban one book, you can challenge them all under the most ridiculous of pretexts: The Lorax portrays the timber industry in a negative light! The mouse in the room in Goodnight Moon is a health code violation! And let's not even start on the safety concerns raised by The Magic Treehouse . Soon, Amy Anne and her friends find themselves on the front line of an unexpected battle over book banning, censorship, and who has the right to decide what they can and can't read. Ban This Book is a love letter to the written word and its power to give kids a voice, for readers aged 8+. 'Readers, librarians, and all those books that have drawn a challenge have a brand new hero in Amy Ann Ollinger . . . Stand up and cheer, book lovers. This one's for you.' Kathi Appelt, Newbery Honor winning author of The Underneath ' Ban This Book is absolutely brilliant and belongs on the shelves of every library in the multiverse.' Lauren Myracle, author of the best-selling Internet Girls series, the most challenged books of 2009 and 2011

Experience a "brilliant exploration" (Walter Isaacson) of America's political culture war and a hilarious call to arms for the elite, with three chapters on foibles of the pandemic era. "I can think of no one more suited to defend elitism than Stein, a funny man with hands as delicate as a baby full of soft-boiled eggs." --Jimmy Kimmel, host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! The night Donald Trump won the presidency, our author Joel Stein, Thurber Prize finalist and former staff writer for Time Magazine, instantly knew why. The main reason wasn't economic anxiety or racism. It was that he was anti-elitist. Hillary Clinton represented Wall Street, academics, policy papers, Davos, international treaties and the people who think they're better than you. People like Joel Stein. Trump represented something far more appealing, which was beating up people like Joel Stein. In a full-throated defense of academia, the mainstream press, medium-rare steak, and civility, Joel Stein fights against populism. He fears a new tribal elite is coming to replace him, one that will fend off expertise of all kinds and send the country hurtling backward to a time of wars, economic stagnation and the well-done steaks doused with ketchup that Trump eats. To find out how this shift happened and what can be done, Stein spends a week in Roberts County, Texas, which had the highest percentage of Trump voters in the country. He goes to the home of Trump-loving Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams; meets people who create fake news; and finds the new elitist organizations merging both right and left to fight the populists. All the while using the biggest words he knows.