Jerry Craft writes: “The parents and politicians who fight to ban books like mine will never entertain the idea that our books help kids who feel like outsiders see that they are not alone. They will never see the humor, or the love, that we pour into our pages. Instead, they invent things that never actually happen in some of the books that they work so hard to ban. They throw out terms such as Marxism, even though they couldn’t tell you whether it is based on the writings of Karl or Groucho. And I sincerely doubt that anyone who criticizes a middle-grade book for teaching critical race theory even knows what this is. But this is the same angry mob mentality that will create more authors who feel the need to write their own stories, only to eventually have their books banned.”