Nov/Dec Meeting: All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

**In an attempt to navigate around holiday schedules, we will have one meeting the week after Thanksgiving to cover both November and December, and will return to normal scheduling in January.**

All American Boys (2015) is a novel written in tandem by authors Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. Main characters Rashad Butler and Quinn Collins are two young men, one black and one white, whose lives are forever changed by an act of extreme police brutality. The story is told in Rashad and Quinn’s alternating perspectives, as they grapple with the complications that spin out of this violent moment and reverberate in their families, school, and town.

Reasons for challenges:
* In 2020, All American Boys landed the third position on the American Library Association's list of the most commonly banned and challenged books in the United States. The book was banned, challenged, and/or restricted "for profanity, drug use, and alcoholism, and because it was thought to promote anti-police views, contain divisive topics, and be 'too much of a sensitive matter right now.'"
* Marshall University Libraries offer examples of challenges between 2019 and 2022: https://www.marshall.edu/library/bannedbooks/all-american-boys/
* In October 2025, Danvers, Massachusetts teacher Sarah Stone responded to challenges of the book being included in the 8th grade curriculum with comments at a school committee meeting, including: “Silencing the reality, viewpoints and perspective of the Black American experience and story is not teaching from a place of truth. We simply should not reject stories that are uncomfortable or difficult to understand when they are the lived experience of people who are different from ourselves.”

Hope to see you there!