June, a 12 year old bookworm, brings home a book with the word "witch" in the title and her very strict parents freak out, confiscate it and all other books in her room, and the bring up the issue to the principle of her middle school. June got the book from the middle school library, and very shortly the librarian is suspended and nearly all books have been removed from the shelves to be reviewed by a panel. Teachers are told they cannot assign any reading outside of the approved curriculum, and students are threatened with detention if they are caught with an unassigned book. June loves book too much to roll over- she starts lending books to fellow students out of an empty locker, dubbing herself 'The Rebel Librarian'. This is a quick and easy read, which I would have enjoyed a lot at age 12.

However, I checked it out because I am a trans author of a book which had been facing a series of bans and challenges all around the country. The patterns that I am seeing in the current wave of book challenges is this: books with queer themes, books on the history of racism, books by POC authors, and books about sexual health, sex ed, and abortion are the books being hit the hardest. None of those topics ever come up in Property of the Rebel Librarian, and June's parents don't seem to have any particular political or religious stand point- their only motivation is an intense, manic desire to control their child for her "safety". Making the book bans in this middle grade novel more explicitly about queer books, trans books, books by POC authors etc would have made this narrative much more political- and possible made the book itself more vulnerable to the exact kind of book challenges that it talks about! I can see why the author chose to tell a simpler, smaller story. But I do think a lot of depth was lost to me, an adult reader, by making the logic behind the bans apolitical and rather tame.