A notable phenomenon in US schools is the recent increase in book bans. Between 2021-2023, book bans rose 33% in K-12 public schools. The most consistently challenged books are those that center the lives, histories, and perspectives of people of color and members of the LGBTQIA+ community. The Great Banned-Books Bake Sale is a trade book that describes this movement to censor in a child-accessible way. The book tells the story of Kanzi, an Egyptian American Arabic elementary school student who suddenly can’t find books with characters who look like her in her school library. She is dismayed to learn the district banned them. Rallying around this injustice, Kanzi and her classmates decide to have a bake sale to raise money to buy the books that were banned to keep them accessible. Eventually the district reverses the ban. This story is based on what happened in a Pennsylvania school district in 2021. We use this trade book to engage the students in the inquiry’s compelling question, “How can we solve big problems?” In doing so, fourth and fifth graders learn about how children can work together to solve real world problems, and with those models in mind, decide how to act and organize around community issues.
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