Banned Book Week Selection: Are you kidding me this was the most challenged book of 2016? Has everyone lost their minds?

Each year, I try to read a frequently challenged or banned book during Banned Books Week (September 24-30). I have very particular feelings about the concept of banning or suppressing works of fiction because they do not fit into a particular worldview (I’m staunchly against it). Do I think every book should have an audience and be read? Probably not. However, I do believe in our ability to choose for ourselves what we should read, and that banning or challenging books which only serve to widen our understanding of the world and people around us is shameful.

For the life of me, I’m not sure why this was the most challenged book last year. Yes, it has some sexual content (a character becomes pregnant and 16, and another character is not handling it well), and there is some foul language (usually in reference to said pregnancy) but otherwise this incredibly detailed and beautiful book is exactly in line with the wide variety of YA that lines bookstore and library shelves.

To the book itself: This graphic novel, a Printz and Caldecott winner, is at its heart a short story about two early teen girls whose families both visit Awago Beach, Ontario each summer. The girls are roughly 18 months apart, but share the kind of friendship born of many hours spent together in a vacuum. Rose is an only child whose parents seem rather ordinary. Windy is an adopted only child who goes to the beach with her mother and grandmother who are definitely on the “hippie” end of the spectrum. It is a “coming of age” story where these preteens/early teens are figuring out how to be more mature and what it means to leave the trappings of childhood behind.

I found the dynamic of these two different only children and the varieties of their familial interactions to be the most interesting part of the narrative. I also am in love with the art in this book. Jillian Tamaki is a flat out genius and her duo chromatic work (purples and blacks) leaves you with the uneasy feeling of a healing bruise, while also perfectly capturing the aesthetic of a large lake.