With the 2025–2026 school year under way, and classrooms and school libraries across the U.S. embroiled in censorship efforts—some out in the open and some under the table—a team of authors have assembled their practical, proven advice for right to read advocacy. Ban This! How One School Fought Two Book Bans and Won (and How You Can Too), published by Lerner’s YA nonfiction imprint, Zest Books, compiles arguments and approaches used by activists at Central York High School in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Ban This! is the brainchild of the Panther Anti-Racist Union, aka PARU, a coalition of CYHS teachers and students. Ben Hodge, the school artistic director, and Patricia A. Jackson, a teacher of world literature and creative writing, are the lead authors and PARU club advisors. Four of their former students—Christina Ellis, Renee Ellis, Edha Gupta, and Olivia Pituch—contribute chapters. And yes, while the CYHS mascot happens to be a panther, the allusion to the Black Panthers’ community organizing and educational mission is not lost on PARU. “We love the double meaning, and it gets people questioning what the Panthers were actually about,” Hodge said.

The book opens with a timeline: PARU formed in June 2020 in response to the murder of Black Minneapolis resident George Floyd by a white police officer. In the months that followed, Central York School District—located in staunchly Republican York County—compiled a set of books and other teaching materials on diversity and inclusion, and school board members attempted to ban the resources. PARU protested on social media and at the school until, a year later, the board rescinded the ban.

In 2022–2023, when a conservative committee tried to remove Patricia McCormick’s Sold, Sapphire’s Push, and Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Mist and Fury from the school library, PARU spoke out at school board meetings and saw the books restored.

Though ultimately victorious, the fights were “terrifying,” Jackson said. “We’re called the Panther Anti-Racism Union for a reason. It’s a union of teachers and kids.” Opponents “came for us,” she continued. “They didn’t know that we had an ACLU lawyer on speed dial, and when they found out, they backed off quickly. But a lot of teachers who do stand up get burned out. There are teachers who are in therapy five times a week because school boards came after them.”

Hodge said the wins took the heat off, to some degree. Since 2023, Moms for Liberty and a conservative effort known as the Pennsylvania Economic Growth Forum “didn't even try to come back” to CYHS, although they’re active in area schools. “We were ready for them, but they must know that there’s an organized group of young people and families who are willing and able to pounce and fight,” Hodge said. “This says a lot about what communities can do as an antidote for this type of extremism.”

Right to Read 'Gladiators'

PARU started with seven students meeting on Zoom. The club still exists, with 35 students this year and an average of 30–40 members annually. “We do a lot of education and awareness about issues,” Hodge said. “The kids are really into the conversation surrounding Bad Bunny right now. My Puerto Rican students are fired up about this question of citizenship.”

The book project came about unexpectedly, after Jackson touted PARU’s successes to her literary agent, Sara Megibow. “I was always bragging about the kids, and Sara said, ‘Let me put some feelers out,’ ” Jackson recalled. “The next thing I know, we’re in a meeting, and the kids are being offered contract representation.” Megibow suggested they compile a how-to on fighting book bans.

The PARU team envisioned a handbook that young people could utilize. “We knew early on we didn’t want it to be a research book or stats about book bans,” Hodge said. “PEN America and the American Library Association are already doing that. We wanted to fuse the powerful story of what we did with the practical tactics.”

Megibow pitched Ban This! to Lerner, where it was acquired by then-editorial director Shaina Olmanson in 2023 and edited by Olmanson’s successor, Brian Farrey-Latz. Senior editorial director Amy Fitzgerald saw the book through the final stages of the production process. “What’s so unique about this book is how collaborative the approach is,” Fitzgerald said. “You can’t do this work without buy-in from the next generation and without treating young people as stakeholders in this struggle.”

“It's important for us at Lerner that our books offer kids tools to think for themselves and express themselves,” Fitzgerald added. “I’d like to see a growing ecosystem of resources for people of all ages.” To that end, the publisher has created teaching guides to accompany the book.

To get word out about the book and PARU, Jackson and Hodge are reaching out to advocacy organizations including PEN America and We Need Diverse Books. On October 5, they spoke with John Chrastka of EveryLibrary for Banned Books Week, and they spoke with an undergraduate audience at Gettysburg College in September. Other stops include East Shore Library in Harrisburg, Pa., and Affirmations LGBTQ+ community center in Ferndale, Mich.

Jackson and Hodge also have another book in mind, with the working title Nourishing a Disruptive Classroom, which touches on the educational mission of Ban This! Jackson said many of her students come to her in need of the content in frequently banned books such as Push, Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give, and George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue.

“We don’t have your honors kids, we don’t have your AP kids—we get gladiators,” she said. “And when the gladiators lose their mind with other teachers, they’re coming to Ben's classroom, or my classroom, to decompress. They’re acting out because their stories are being invalidated and not heard, and we have them do poetry and spoken word and creative writing. We have conversations in safe spaces, where they can blossom and grow into themselves.”

Some of them grow into PARU members, and Hodge characterizes PARU as one of three nationally known youth right-to-read advocacy groups, the others being South Carolina’s Diversity Awareness Youth Literacy Organization and Texas’s Students Engaged in Advancing Texas. “I just can’t underscore how important it is to let people know that they’re not alone, to hear success stories like DAYLO, success stories like PARU,” Hodge said. “Like Patty says all the time, we won. We hope Ban This! will inspire people. You can be successful. There is hope, even in this storm.”