Ban This Book

Amy Anne Ollinger is a nine-year-old Black American girl who lives with her family in a subdivision in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her family members include her parents and her two younger sisters, Angelina, age 5, who devotes time and energy to her goal of being a pony, and Alexis, the “middle sister” (21), who practices ballet daily on Amy Anne’s side of the bedroom they share. Flotsam and Jetsam are the family dogs, two Rottweilers who add to the chaos and disruptive environment of Amy Anne’s home. Amy Anne often finds that she, as the quiet sibling, must balance the chaos of her sisters, such as setting the table for Alexis because she is busy with ballet, or squishing against the door in the backseat to appease Angelina’s demands to not be touched. If there is an argument with either sister, Amy Anne’s parents expect her to behave as the mature one. Meanwhile, Amy Anne struggles to find any privacy or workspace of her own in the house.

Amy Anne loves to read. She owns only a few books of her own but utilizes the school library every day, both to check out books and to use as a quiet, peaceful place to sit and read. In fact, she tells her parents that she attends a variety of afterschool clubs and takes the late bus home—what Amy Anne does, however, is find her favorite spot in a corner of the library and read every afternoon. One of the reasons From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is her favorite book is because the main characters run away successfully, something Amy Anne would love to try to escape the turmoil and lack of attention shown to her at home.

At the beginning of the novel, Amy Anne is quiet and tends to want to blend into the crowd. She has a good friend in Rebecca Zimmerman but is not particularly close to any other students. She has a noticeable habit of elaborating a response to a person’s actions or words in her head but never actually saying it. Her inability to speak up and truthfully say what is on her mind causes her frustration and pain. For example, when she plans to speak at the school board meeting but cannot, she feels she let down her father, her family, her librarian Mrs. Jones, and mostly herself. Additionally, when the school board bans the book she went there to save, she begins to feel a personal responsibility for its loss from the school library shelves. This obligation is what prompts her gradual entry into the world of rebellion and rule-breaking as the BBLL takes shape. Amy Anne’s focus remains fervently on one guiding principle: that those who want to read a book should be able to do so (unless their own parents say no)—so much so that she cannot see the potential risks she takes or betrayals she carries out until authorities find her “illegal little library” (163). Her own transformation takes place without her realizing it, and when it hits her that the BBLL is not just an idealistic reaction to Mrs. Spencer’s rashness and the school board’s unfair practices, but a very concrete one with formal consequences, she simply stands and cries. She is suddenly unrecognizable to herself and to her family: “My parents looked at me like they’d never seen me before” (162). She refuses to implicate her friends and so bears the punishment alone. Her emotions prompt a dramatic decision: “[…] I was done speaking up. For good” (164).

Like many heroes/heroines whose quest takes similar shape, Amy Anne must retreat and regroup to gain perspective and clarity. She weeps for her role in the BBLL, thinking over the course of her three-day, no-books-allowed suspension that she deserves her lot in life and vowing to return to her quiet, no-trouble ways. This low point in her character arc juxtaposes with her turn of spirit once back at school when she realizes that not only are the student readers not angry with her, but they look to her more than ever as a leader of the cause. She rallies with a new confidence, and from that moment, instead of vague movements based on ideals, she makes determined and fully conscious decisions to save Mrs. Jones and the freedoms of her school library, come what may in terms of consequences. Losing the hard toil of a week spent on Request for Reconsideration forms to Angelina’s shredding is a momentary lapse in her growing maturity, but she recovers quickly and takes the reins in solving the problem.

By the story’s resolution, a much more poised and self-assured Amy Anne takes the podium at the school board meeting, now a girl who can bring the hasty adults back to their senses through logic and facts. Amy Anne’s coming-of-age is apparent at the close of the story when she symbolically earns her own bedroom from her parents, but she still has plenty left to learn in her growing-up years—her father tells her she is not yet old enough for The Hunger Games.