Attack of the Black Rectangles

Mac says 97 percent of his town is White. Mac and his friends get to know their Vietnamese American classmate, Hoa, and she talks to them about wanting to be called by her real name instead of the Anglicized version: Hannah. She explains that she'd stopped using Hoa to make English-speaking people more comfortable. Indigenous land acknowledgment is explained, and there are historical mentions of atrocities against Susquehannock and Lenin Lenape tribes. Mac's dad suffers from a mental illness that he doesn't completely understand, and his friend Denis deals with anxiety.

Descriptions of historical atrocities including book burnings, the Holocaust, and gas chambers; a book scene in which Jewish middle school-aged girls in a concentration camp are forced to shower naked in a large group in front of Nazi men. Mac's grandpa has PTSD. Mac says, "Grandad served two tours in the Vietnam war and has a Purple Heart Medal. He knows horrible." Guns are mentioned in passing. There are references to the U.S. Founding Fathers having enslaved people. Mac's dad smashes a mug that's important to his mom out of anger and shows no remorse, he scares Mac by getting angry and driving erratically, and he robs his mom's house. She cries when they discover the personal things he's taken, including all of Mac's baseball gear. There's mention of an LGBTQ+ child being verbally bullied while walking home. Mac briefly worries about getting picked on and beat up when he gets to middle school because he's scared all the time. In an effort to get rid of his shame, Grandpa yells that he killed two men in Vietnam, once stole food because he was hungry, and used to spank his kids.

Girls aren't allowed to wear shorts in school, and a teacher writes in the school paper that it's because the boys will become distracted. Explores a budding middle school romance with repeated mentions of possible kissing by the sixth grade characters. Dennis thinks he might be aroace, which is defined in the book as a person who doesn't experience romantic or sexual attraction. Grandpa makes a subtle reference to engaging in sexual activity in his car when he was younger. One of the censored parts of the books described a naked girl in a concentration camp showering with her hands over her breasts in front of Nazi soldiers.

Infrequent use of "damn", "jerk", "turd", and "crap."

Mac's grandpa sometimes smokes a pipe. There's a subtle mention of Mac's father having a drinking problem.