Last year, a parent at a Virginia school board meeting stepped up to a microphone and read a passage from my book, “Sold.” The scene she chose to read, informed in part by my own experiences of sexual abuse, describes the sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl by an older man. There is no graphic language or obscenity in the passage; the story is told from the point of view of a child — in the words of a child — and conveys her confusion, terror and physical pain. It made the list thanks, in part, to Moms for Liberty, a right-wing organization that has created a playbook that’s been used across the country — by people who in some case are not even parents — to lobby to have books removed from libraries and classrooms. These challenges are not grass-roots responses to books coming home in students’ backpacks; they are campaigns orchestrated by a national clearinghouse with shadowy funding and apparent links to groups such as the Heritage Foundation. “Moms” in Texas, Florida, Idaho, Pennsylvania and elsewhere have all read the same passage and have used similar language to challenge the book.

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