Number of challenges: 48

Challenged for: profanity, claimed to be sexually explicit

Andrews describes his text as “weird little anti-romance about a teenage boy whose mom forces him to befriend a girl with cancer” in which “I hoped it would make kids laugh and feel understood; I thought adults might find it refreshingly frank about how mundane and disappointing teenage life usually is (2023, para 1). Instead, the MFL group found issue with language deemed offensive and actions seen as inappropriate.

Conversations between the two main male characters represent any discussions one would hear in a high school yard, at times displaying disrespect for girls, racist slurs, stereotypes and drug/alcohol use. Their inclusion is not an advocacy for such behaviour, rather a representation of normal adolescent conduct written within the character perspectives.

Andrews references conflictive and sexual denotations passages from traditionally accepted texts including the Book of Genesis: “That doesn’t mean the Bible actually is pornography, of course. That would just show how it can be dishonest and misleading to read something out of context. This is an important part of what schools call “reading comprehension” (2023, para 6). I find this statement elucidatory with regard to all material banned for language issues – I would relish this as an argument in opposition to Moms for Liberty’s religious platform.