About this item
"Readers, librarians, and all those books that have drawn a challenge have a brand new hero ... . Stand up and cheer, book lovers. This one's for you." -- Kathi Appelt, author of the Newbery Honor-winning The UnderneathAn inspiring tale of a fourth-grader who fights back when her favorite book is banned from the school library -- by starting her own illegal locker library!It all started the day Amy Anne Ollinger tried to check out her favorite 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 favorite book was banned! All because a classmate's mom 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.
About the Author
Alan Gratz was born and raised in Knoxville, TN, home of the 1982 World's Fair. After a carefree but humid childhood, Alan attended the University of Tennessee, where he earned a College Scholars degree with a specialization in creative writing, and later, a Master's degree in English education. In addition to writing plays, magazine articles, and a few episodes of A&E's City Confidential, Alan has taught catapult-building to middle-schoolers, written more than 6,000 radio commercials, sold other people's books, lectured at a Czech university, and traveled the galaxy as a space ranger. (One of those is not true. ) Alan is the author of one of the ALA's 2007 Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults, Samurai Shortstop (Dial 2006) , and Something Rotten (Dial 2007) , a contemporary young adult murder mystery based on "Hamlet. " He is currently at work on a sequel, Something Wicked (Dial 2008) , and a middle-grade novel about family, baseball, and American history, called The Brooklyn Nine (Dial 2009) .Alan now lives with his wife Wendi and his daughter Jo in the high country of Western North Carolina, where he enjoys reading, eating pizza, and, perhaps not too surprisingly, watching baseball.
