Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I saw a video clip from a school board meeting where an angry parent cherry picked a passage from this book in an attempt to have it removed from a school library because of "sexual content." Without that prompting, a young adult novel probably would have flown under this 60-year-old reader's radar, but I'm glad it didn't because it's one of the best novels I've ever read. It turned out that the passage was simply part of the author's brilliant character development, and it had little else to do with the novel. It involved the white schoolboys' fantasies of dehumanizing the Mexican American protagonist and defined a collective character referred to simply as "The Gang." At it's core, this book is a love story between an African American boy and a Mexican American girl, but it's set against the backdrop of the unrelenting racism and misogyny that characterized deep East Texas in the 1930s, and a non-fictional disaster that was the New London School explosion. The story is intricately woven and compelling, and all the characters, whether protagonist or antagonist, are multidimensional. Even the villain is humanized and, at times, the reader might even be somewhat sympathetic toward him— as difficult as that may be. After reading the book— in its entirety— it's my conclusion that "sexual content" was not the parent's real objection. Edit: If this book were a movie, it would probably be rated PG-13.