"Maudie and Me and the Dirty Book" is a 1980 young adult novel by Betty Miles, dealing with themes of censorship, as well as other coming of age themes.
Our protagonist, Kate Harris, has just entered middle school and is dealing with normal middle school social anxieties, but volunteers for a program reading books to first graders at a nearby school. She is paired with Maudie, a somewhat frumpy girl who Kate fears will be a social liability in her social circles. However, being a generally nice girl, Kate and Maudie become friendly, as they go to read to the younger children. Kate picks a seemingly innocuous book, "The Birthday Dog" about a boy getting a puppy for his birthday. The book contains a scene of the puppy being born, and the children ask questions about the process, which leads to a very brief discussion of reproduction. Some of those children report it to their parents, leading to parents protesting "obscene books". There is a controversy, letters in the local paper, a school board meeting, and at the end, everyone learns a lesson, and Kate and Maudie become friends.
As a book, there were a few things I liked about it, and a few things I didn't like about it. The book obviously deals with a serious topic, and deals with it in a measured, informative way. The social setting and dialogue are also done realistically, and in a way that the intended audience could relate to. The things that I didn't like was that the book was a little too pat and didactic, with characters acting in a way that forces the plot along. Related to that, the book either falls victim to, or takes advantage of, a common idea for middle school students: that the entire world is watching them constantly. In the book, the events that happen to Kate, a short interaction with some children, becomes a controversy that envelopes the town overnight, and is the only thing that all her friends and schoolmates talk about. Although, come to think of it, I have seen communities lose their shit over less.
There were also two things that struck me about the book. When I started reading it, I didn't know when it was written. Arguments about censorship tend to be cyclical and come up every few years, and recently they have been coming up again. But this book was written almost 45 years ago. An interesting thing about that is that it takes place in affluent, educated suburban Massachusetts. In the current day, the area of the country would probably be a much more relevant topic for a fight over censorship. But in 1980, the difference between suburban Massachusetts and rural Oklahoma would have probably been much less, as far as the concerns of parents went. The second thing is, as I have mentioned several times before, this book is a sign of just how much YA has changed. This book, a socially realistic story set in a comfortable suburban setting, manages to use the word "penis" and "vagina", and admits that reproduction is a natural thing for children and young people to be curious about, something that YA fiction stopped admitting at a certain point.
So despite a few criticisms, I think this is a good book for its intended audience, and it is also interesting to me as a piece of social history.