I’ve participated in a number of efforts to fight the book banning initiatives that have reared up in various parts of the country. Last year, I testified before my town’s school committee on the dangers of restricting curricula and library access, worked with a national book arts collaborative to create single-sheet “zine” books on book banning challenges, and helped design book-banning related programs for libraries. I’ll describe these projects in future posts, but today I’d like to highlight the efforts of a seventh grader who recently completed a project that combines her passions for cooking and reading with her desire to bring attention to book banning.

Nutmeg is a seventh grader in a suburban community in Massachusetts.  For her bat mitzvah project she decided to make cookies inspired by banned books, sell them to neighbors and friends, and donate the proceeds to a non-profit organization that tracks challenges to books and provides resources to people who want to resist book banning in their communities. Last February, I interviewed Nutmeg about her project.

How did you come to the idea of making cookies that are inspired by banned books?

As part of our bat mitzvah preparation program, we were instructed to do something that benefits the community. I wrote down a list of things I like to do and books and baking were on the list. I had also heard that some good books were being banned, and I didn’t think that was a good idea. At the time I thought that the effort to ban books was only going on in Florida, but later I learned that book banning is more widespread.

How did you pick the books that you were going to use in your project?

I went to the library and looked online at some writer/author websites.  Pen America was one of the sites, and they have lists and graphs depicting books that are being banned or challenged.  Some of the websites I looked at described why books were being challenged. I picked books from the lists that I wanted to read or had read in the past year.

What books did you pick?

I had bought The Diary of Anne Frank, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Hate You Give at books sales at my library. I knew that The Hate You Give had won an award. I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower last year. It was on a reading list of recommended books at the library. I picked Looking for Alaska, which is about a boarding school in Alabama with a character named Alaska, because it was written by John Green. John Green wrote The Fault in Our Stars which I really liked. I forget how I picked Two Boys Kissing. It’s a story about two boys who decide they are going to try get into The Guinness Book of Records by beating the existing record for the longest kiss ever.

How long was the existing record?

Thirty-two hours.

Did they make it?

Read the book!

Good idea!  How did you figure out how to make sugar cookies that would symbolize the books you’d chosen?

Anne Frank is about a Jewish girl hiding during WWII, so it was easy to use a six-pointed star cookie cutter for that. For To Kill a Mockingbird, I used a bird.  My mom got a cookie cutter on Etsy that said “Black Lives Matter” that we thought would work for The Hate you Give.  We used a cookie cutter shaped like lips for Two Boys Kissing.

What else did you do?

We offered six different cookie shapes in batches of five, each for ten dollars. I researched why each book was banned and wrote or cut-and-pasted a short description of the book and why it was banned, and I placed that description in each box of cookies.

What were you hoping would happen as a result of your project?

I wanted to raise awareness and maybe change the behavior of some people.  Everyone, at least my age, likes cookies, so I thought that would be a good draw as well. 

How did you get customers for your cookies?

My mom and I created an order form and sent it to her friends and our neighbors and some writers that she knows.  I also told my friends about it. 

Did that work?

Yes, we got a ton of orders. I think we made over 500 cookies!  It took us three days to make the cookies and package them up, and then we had to deliver them.  My Mom and Dad did most of the delivering.  The project made over $1800 that I am donating to Pen America. 

Wow. What did your customers say?

Some of them were impressed by the project.  The kids really enjoyed the cookies. At least four people told me that, as a result of my project, they were going to read the books that I described.

What if someone else wanted to make banned book cookies as a project in their community or library, how would you feel about that?

I think it would be fine!  The more people know about the book bans and book challenges, the better.

Note: In late February, Nutmeg and her mother traveled to New York City to present her donation and chat with the CEO of Pen America. 

If you or someone you know has a worked on a creative response to book banning,  I would love to hear about it.