Attack of the Black Rectangles

by Amy Sarig King

My mom knows a lot about grace. As I said, she works in hospice care, which is technically where people who know they’re going to die go so they can die in peace. Once people die, she then helps their loved ones through their grief, and if that isn’t the most graceful thing I’ve ever heard of, I don’t know what is.

Grace is a good thing to have. It’s like jam. It sweetens things.

I can’t think of a more horrible thing, really. And the longer time goes on, the less we talk about it. But we can’t pretend it didn’t happen—because when you pretend a thing didn’t happen, that means it can happen again.

“Whoever censored this book has something wrong with their brain.”

The Holocaust was so bad, it’s hard to really understand it. The scene, without the black rectangle, with all the words in the right place, feels real now. It’s the truth. That’s the point. Jane Yolen wanted us to read the truth—every single word of it.

“And this weekend we had to buy a replacement so I could read the book as it was meant to be read, not in a censored way that someone else thinks I should read.”

“It’s better to think about things you can control instead of things you can’t control.