First Line: Attack of the Black Rectangles

The first line of Attack of the Black Rectangles by Amy Sarig King is 

According to a lot of the adults in our town, everything here is perfect. 

I enjoyed reading this middle grade novel and felt like it had something worth saying about censorship and was also a good story that should appeal to children about 12 years old. 

Here is an excerpt from Jennifer Howard's review in the NYTimes that gives some idea of why this book is worth reading:

Part of what makes “Attack of the Black Rectangles” such a satisfying read is that it embeds the story of kids fighting for intellectual freedom inside the story of a sixth-grade boy figuring out a complicated home life and feelings he doesn’t know what to do with. The details feel right, down to Mac’s Todoroki sweatshirt and his favorite anime — the one he makes up in his head about a boy with an alien father.

Fiction? Not exactly. Mac’s capricious, mostly absent dad claims to be an alien anthropologist and wakes him up for flights in his spaceship (an old Karmann Ghia) in the middle of the night. No wonder Mac doesn’t trust adults to be straight with him. But saving graces abound: Mac’s friends; his mother, a hospice worker who’s a model of compassion and support; his grandfather, a Vietnam vet coping with PTSD, who shows him how to be vulnerable and gives him unconditional love.

At least in my opinion, this is a book that should appeal to both children as well as serious adult readers.