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When Mac first opens his classroom copy of Jane Yolen's The Devil’s Arithmetic and finds some words blacked out, he thinks it must be a mistake. But then when he and his friends discover what the missing words are, he's outraged. Someone in his school is trying to prevent kids from reading the full story. But who?Even though his unreliable dad tells him to not get so emotional about a book (or anything else), Mac has been raised by his mom and grandad to call out things that are wrong. He and his friends head to the principal's office to protest the censorship... but her response doesn't take them seriously. So many adults want Mac to keep his words to himself. Mac's about to see the power of letting them out.Amy Sarig King writes this story from real life experience. Jane Yolen’s The Devil’s Arithmetic was censored in her local elementary school in the exact way as it’s described in her novel. After buying an uncensored copy at her local independent bookstore, she went to the principal to fix the problem, but was shrugged off as if she were silly to think that censorship is wrong.The Attack of the Black Rectangles takes on censorship and intolerance, two issues of importance to King, as she cautions in her author’s note:Now… school districts all over the country are seeing a massive rise in book bans—where just a few citizens are removing many books from shelves in a call to “protect” you from the truth . . . when taking away stories of people different from you, or stories where you might be able to see yourself and your family, or, really, any stories, is the opposite of protection. I want you to care about intellectual freedom— which is the right to read.