Mac's hometown has a lot of rules. There's a strict curfew, no junk food, and girls aren't allowed to wear pants to school. It doesn't matter who argues against these rules, the school and the town council always bow to the whims of Ms. Laura Samuel Sett. She always has a matter-of-fact answer for everything, and Mac and his friends will be in her 6th-grade class this year.
Everything seems fine until it's time for literature circles. That's when it happens. They discover their copies of The Devil's Arithmetic have black rectangles over certain words and phrases. Mac's mom and granddad raised him to investigate when things seem wrong, so he and his friends begin a journey to understand what the blacked-out words are and why they are censored.
They know they are right, but no one other than their parents seems to take them seriously. Suddenly, they begin to reexamine the rules and search for the underlying truths many people want to ignore.
This is a timely and engaging story about censorship and seeing through the surface to find the truths beneath. It reads a bit more like a fable, but Mac and his friends still seem like real kids until the very end. The last chapter is the only time the voice seems less like a 6th grader and more like an adult. I would still recommend this one as food for thought and great discussion.
