By Jesse Andrews
© April 21, 2015, Amulet Books
File Size: 8.3 MB
306 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1613123065
Greg Gaines hates high school. But as a senior, he thinks he’s finally figured out how to survive unscathed—make no friends, make no enemies. Just get through it on the periphery. And that’s working great for about a day, until his mom shames him into befriending a fellow student who has cancer. After that, everything falls apart.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is my third banned book for 2025, and I am so glad I read it. Told entirely through the self-deprecating, high-school-senior perspective of Greg Gaines, it’s hilarious (seriously—I laughed out loud more times than I can count), heart-warming, and gut-wrenchingly real. It was impossible not to get sucked into Greg’s story, or to see what was going on behind his anxiety-driven riffs of deliberate hilarity. Just like most other high school seniors who aren’t “one of the popular kids,” he’s just trying to survive, sometimes under very emotional and confusing circumstances. I loved how the author brought Greg through something as harrowing as the death of a friend at such a young age, and how the character grows in subtle and clear ways without losing who he was at his core in the process. The development of their friendship, short as it is, was touching and emotional. Well done.
The film adaption won two different awards at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. And yet, according to Wikipedia, the book was the seventh-most banned and challenged book in the U.S. in 2021 and tied for tenth-most banned and challenged book in 2022. In 2023, Cobb County, Georgia not only removed it from the library shelves in 20 different facilities; they also threatened to fire the media specialists who’d bought it in the first place. In addition, according to Marshall Libraries, school districts in both Texas and Florida removed the title from school libraries. Marshall adds that in 2024, Hanover County Schools in Virginia banned this book along with 19 others; and Council Bluffs Community School District in Iowa removed Me and Earl, along with 58 other titles, because it contained “a description of a sex act.” After a review, however, Me and Earl and a few others were retained in the end.
Reasons given for all these challenges and bans included the use of profanity, depictions of substance abuse, sexually explicit dialogue, and that it was degrading to women.
First, let me say that I can absolutely see why, in the pages of this book, these claims could be made. Yes, there is a lot of profanity, as well as sexual references and depictions of substance abuse. But think about it: this is a 17- or 18-year-old male describing his time as a senior in high school. I find it absurd that the book is banned in schools when it feels like such an accurate picture of what such a character might actually experience while in school. Did I swear in high school? Absolutely. Were there frequent views of friends or others around me abusing drugs? You betcha. Did I and the other kids make sexual references or speak frankly and explicitly about the sex act and body parts? Of course we did. It’s what high school kids do.
As for whether it is degrading to women, I disagree with that one. Instead, what I see is an angsty, unpopular, young male who is driven by hormones he has yet to figure out, much less learn to control, while working hard to figure out what that hormonal drive is all about. He wants to be liked by girls but feels absolutely hopeless that any of those he himself would like to date would ever want anything to do with him. Again, this is typical high-school drama that is going on inside a young man’s head as he is trying to figure out the dance of the sexes and making mistake after mistake. Young males aren’t alone in that; we all go through this. It feels normal to me. At no time did the character try to force himself on a girl or manipulate her into anything—other than laughter. To me, this book was a frank, unfiltered, coming-of-age tale that pulled no punches. It rang absolutely true to life, and maybe that is what upset so many people.
The given reading age for this book is listed at 14 and up, which seems right to me—depending on the reader’s maturity level and ability to understand the storyline. Because it isn’t just about budding adult issues here; it’s about the loss of a friend when one isn’t fully equipped for such a loss, nor for how it changes those left behind in the process.
Personally, I found Me and Earl and the Dying Girl to be a truly remarkable book, one that touched me in unexpected ways. Yes, I laughed. But I also cried. I finished the entire book in a single day, and I loved every minute. Most definitely recommended.