Jumpstart the World by Catherine Ryan Hyde

$16.99

Hardcover

The words "grass roots" spring to mind. On Twitter Sunday morning, Sept. 19, #SpeakLoudly began. As grass roots do in nature, #SpeakLoudly grew into something living, renewing and as welcome as Spring. At least, to this author.

#SpeakLoudly supports the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, a Young Adult novel about a girl struggling in the aftermath of rape. Because the previous day a Missouri man named Wesley Scroggins called it "soft pornography," arguing in an op-ed that his school district shouldn't assign it to students. He also went after Sarah Ockler's "Twenty Boy Summer" and Kurt Vonnegut's classic "Slaughterhouse-Five".

Scroggins isn't a school librarian. He is an associate professor of management, a citizen with strong opinions on what books schools should use. Why should we care what he says? Because recently a Sherman Alexie book, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" was successfully banned in nearby Stockton, Mo., and it started with its removal from the classroom. And now "Speak" is being attacked.

Read the rest of this op-ed, along with other Banned Book Week articles, on AOL News.

By the way, Gina Misiroglu of Red Room put me in touch with the AOL people, which is one of the great ways she's bringing traffic to Red Room and getting attention for Red Room's authors.