Attack Of The Black Rectangles

Mac is lost in thought during recess when Aaron almost hits him with a football. Aaron teases him that he is probably thinking about animal rights and that his boyfriend, Denis, is looking for him. Denis tells Mac that Marci wants him to read over the letter to the school board that she wrote. Mac tells Denis that he has been reading ahead in The Devil’s Arithmetic and it is really getting to him. After they read the letter, Mac asks Marci and Denis if they want to protest censorship with him and his grandad outside of Tad’s Books the next day. Denis can’t, but Marci is thrilled and says she’ll be there. As recess ends, Aaron throws his football and hits Marci in the face. Mac helps her up, and Denis reports the incident to their teacher.

Aaron does not return to class immediately, and while the book group is meeting without him, their other member, Hannah, tells them that she does not want to be called Hannah anymore. She explains that her given name is Hoa and that Hannah was the English name that her parents chose to make English-speaking people more comfortable. The group supports her decision and agrees that it’s not fair for people to feel the need to change their names just to accommodate others. They continue discussing the book, and Hoa tells them that her dad is a lawyer and could help them fight against censorship and get them new books. Mac tells her that his mom is planning to meet with the principal about it soon. When Aaron returns to the group, no one tells him what he’s missed. None of them feel comfortable around him because he is ignorant and makes fun of anyone who stands up for injustice.

After school, Mac’s mom meets with Dr. McKenny. When she comes out of the meeting, she is as frustrated as Mac was when he spoke with the principal. McKenny is still untroubled about the censorship, and Mac’s mom fumes that McKenny spoke to her like she was a kid, a statement of which Mac points out the irony.

After Mac’s mom meets with Dr. McKenny, they are both disappointed that she has missed their point that censorship, as a concept, is wrong. The fact that they are still reading the book is beside the point. When they get home, they notice that a lot of items around the house are missing, including his grandad’s car, tools, and clothes. Random things, such as a rug, a vase, and Mac’s baseball stuff are also missing. Mac’s mom calls his grandad and tells him that it looks like Mike took a bunch of stuff and ran away. Mac is angry and confused. When his grandad gets home, he takes a look around and decides to call the police.

After the police leave, Mac stays up late with his mom and grandad. They try to reorganize the house so that it doesn’t look like things are missing. Mac’s grandad reminds his mom that Mike was never going to change and seemed to be getting meaner with time.

Mac decides to tell his mom what he had been hiding about his dad for a while. He confesses that Mike told him that Grandad’s car he’d been working on was really a spacecraft and that he had taken Mac for rides in it in the middle of the night. He explains that his dad thought of himself as an alien from another plant doing anthropological research on humans and had been stuck there for 13 years. His mother does not respond with surprise but instead says that she knew he’d been stuck but didn’t know that he was an alien.

Mac tells his grandad about his father believing he is an alien, and he is amused. Mac, Grandad, and Mac’s mom laugh as they point out some of the odd things that his father did that would make sense if he were an alien. The tone turns serious, though, and his grandad says that his father isn’t really an alien, he is just a jerk.

Mac doesn’t understand how his father was able to partly convince him that he is an alien and that they were taking rides in his spaceship when it was really just grandad’s car. His mom concedes that there was something magical about his father. Mac concludes that maybe, in different ways, everyone is an alien.

Marci arrives at Mac’s house the morning that they are protesting censorship outside of the bookstore. When Mac greets her, he thinks he sounds like a 40-year-old man instead of an 11-year-old boy and feels self-conscious. 

While they are protesting with Grandad, Mac tries to untangle his feelings about his dad and how he took their stuff and left. Again, he compares his feelings and behavior to an “office guy,” and his dad leaving is like a coworker quitting and going to a new job. Mac imagines filing his emotions away into filing cabinets to avoid them. 

After the protest, Mac is surprised when Marci hugs him instead of giving him a high five. While he walks home with Grandad, he tells him that he feels like he is handling all of the things going on in his life like an “office guy.” He begins to cry but also feels like he is watching himself cry in a strange way. His grandad hugs him, and Mac’s body finally relaxes. He cries for a while longer and finally feels human, not half-alien and not like a numb, impersonal office guy. His grandad tells him that crying is good and that he needs to get his feelings out rather than hold them in when upset. 

Letters to the editor of the local newspaper address the town’s curfew. One citizen writes that the 9:00 pm curfew is silly, especially when some restaurants are open until 11:00 pm. He complains that his son and his friend were escorted home by the police because they were simply taking a walk past 9:00 pm. Ms. Sett responds that people who stay up too late will have a bad influence on the town and that “good people are asleep or close to it by 9 p.m.” (145).

Mac, his grandad, and his mom go canoeing a couple days after his dad took their stuff and ran away. It’s an unusual activity for the family, but he believes that families do weird things sometimes to deal with strange or traumatic events like what happened to them. 

On Columbus Day, Mac stays home with his grandad and watches the documentary Blackfish, which he likes because it tells the truth about how bad it is to keep orcas in captivity. The next day, his class is in the library when he sees Denis and Marci talking to each other. He moves closer to them and realizes that Denis is telling Marci that Mac has a crush on her. Denis tells her that Mac can’t stop talking about her, which isn’t true. Marci says that she likes him, too, and has since fourth grade. Denis declares that he’s never had a crush on anyone and never will. Mac approaches them, pretending he hadn’t overheard their conversation. He confirms that Denis has never had a crush on anyone, and he and Marci smile shyly at each other. 

When Mac gets home from school, he sits down outside with his grandad while he meditates. He tells him that the school board will let them speak soon, and Grandad says they should protest again on Saturday. Mac goes inside, saying he has homework, but he really just wants to think about how Marci likes him, too.

In their literature group, Mac, Marci, Denis, and Hoa have read ahead in The Devil’s Arithmetic, against Ms. Sett’s directions; only Aaron has followed the reading schedule. Today is the day that he will read Chapter 11, which contains the scene of girls taking a shower in the concentration camp and the first instance of censorship. Until now, Aaron has been oblivious to the black rectangles in the book and his classmates protesting the censorship.

The others watch Aaron as he reads and finally gets to the part with the blacked-out word. He looks at Mac’s book and sees that his copy doesn’t have the word blacked out and wants to know why. Mac explains that he bought the book himself, but all of the school’s copies have the same marks in them. Mac, Marci, and Denis explain the censorship to him and emphasize how it is an infringement on their personal freedom, knowing that Aaron has strong feelings about personal freedom. As they predicted, Aaron gets angry. He says he’s going to tell his dad about this, but Ms. Sett just smiles smugly. Mac has an idea involving Aaron and his father, and he hopes that it will work the way he plans.

Mac, Marci, and Denis meet for ice cream after school a few days later. They’ve noticed Aaron flipping through the book, looking for more blacked out words, and wonder if he’s told his dad about them yet. Mac tells them that he has been doing research and has not come across any cases of censorship like theirs, where a word or phrase is censored in books. He believes that this practice is probably common but does not get a lot of attention. Marci explains to them that they need to think bigger than just demanding new copies of The Devil’s Arithmetic. They need to get the school board to adopt a policy that will prevent censorship from happening again. Her parents are experts at writing policy and will help her put together a sample one. 

Mac feels ashamed that while Denis and Marci have supportive parents, he has a dad who believes he is an alien. He thinks he couldn’t possibly tell them that and feels like not telling them about what is happening with his family is a lie of omission. Denis leaves first, and Mac thinks about asking Marci to the homecoming dance but can’t bring himself to do it.

On Saturday, Marci and Denis meet up with Mac and his grandad to protest at the bookstore again. Mac is in a strange mood and notices that small things are making him angry. Grandad notices that he is out of sorts and asks if it’s because he wants to ask out Marci but doesn’t know how. He suggests writing her a letter because Mac is good with words. Mac knows that his anger stems from the situation with his dad. He is angry that he can’t understand him and that he took their stuff and left. He’s also angry that he doesn’t feel like he can be honest with Denis and Marci about what’s been going on with him. He tells Grandad that he’s having a hard time trusting people because of it. Grandad takes him to get new baseball gear to cheer him up, but Mac is still preoccupied. He goes to bed early, frustrated that he doesn’t know how to resolve his problems.

Two letters to the editor of the local newspaper are printed. One is a complaint from a citizen because he wants to paint his house but was told that he can only paint it white. The other is Ms. Sett’s response. She believes that all of the houses in the town should be painted white because that is historically accurate. Their town is a historic tourist destination, and she believes everyone should maintain their homes as they would have looked in the 18th century.