September 22-28 was Banned Books Week.
Preliminary data released by the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom found 1128 unique titles challenged from January 1 through August 31, 2024.
Every year they compile a list of the ten most challenged books. I looked at the top 10 for 2023 and was not very familiar with most of them, since they are new books, mostly dealing with gender issues. The only two I knew well and had read were The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.
Incidentally, the most banned book of all time is George Orwell’s 1984.
Only about 90 percent of book challenges are even reported. That said, the most frequently challenged books from 2010 through 2019 include these favorites:
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
- Captain Underpants (series) by Dav Pilkey
- Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
- Looking for Alaska by John Green
- George by Alex Gino
- And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
- Drama by Raina Telgemeier
- Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James
- Internet Girls (series) by Lauren Myracle
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
- Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
- I Am Jazz by Jazz Jennings and Jessica Herthel
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Bone (series) by Jeff Smith
- The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
- Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan
- A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss
- Sex is a Funny Word by Cory Silverberg
- Alice McKinley (series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
- It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie H. Harris
- Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
- Scary Stories (series) by Alvin Schwartz
- Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
- Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
- It’s a Book by Lane Smith
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
- What My Mother Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones
- A Child Called “It” by Dave Pelzer
- Bad Kitty (series) by Nick Bruel
- Crank by Ellen Hopkins
- Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
- Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
- The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby by Dav Pilkey
- This Day in June by Gayle E. Pitman
- This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki
- A Bad Boy Can Be Good For A Girl by Tanya Lee Stone
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- Goosebumps (series) by R.L. Stine
- In Our Mothers’ House by Patricia Polacco
- Lush by Natasha Friend
- The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
- The Holy Bible
- This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson
- Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
- Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
- Gossip Girl (series) by Cecily von Ziegesar
- House of Night (series) by P.C. Cast
- My Mom’s Having A Baby by Dori Hillestad Butler
- Neonomicon by Alan Moore
- The Dirty Cowboy by Amy Timberlake
- The Giver by Lois Lowry
- Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
- Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
- Draw Me a Star by Eric Carle
- Dreaming In Cuban by Cristina Garcia
- Fade by Lisa McMann
- The Family Book by Todd Parr
- Feed by M.T. Anderson
- Go the Fuck to Sleep by Adam Mansbach
- Habibi by Craig Thompson
- House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
- Jacob’s New Dress by Sarah Hoffman
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- Monster by Walter Dean Myers
- Nasreen’s Secret School by Jeanette Winter
- Saga by Brian K. Vaughan
- Stuck in the Middle by Ariel Schrag
- The Kingdom of Little Wounds by Susann Cokal
- 1984 by George Orwell
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
- Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher
- Awakening by Kate Chopin
- Burned by Ellen Hopkins
- Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
- Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
- Glass by Ellen Hopkins
- Heather Has Two Mommies by Lesle´a Newman
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
- Madeline and the Gypsies by Ludwig Bemelmans
- My Princess Boy by Cheryl Kilodavis
- Prince and Knight by Daniel Haack
- Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology by Amy Sonnie
- Skippyjon Jones (series) by Judith Schachner
- So Far from the Bamboo Grove by Yoko Kawashima Watkins
- The Color of Earth (series) by Tong-hwa Kim
- The Librarian of Basra by Jeanette Winter
- The Walking Dead (series) by Robert Kirkman
- Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
- Uncle Bobby’s Wedding by Sarah S Brannen
- Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
How many of these have you read? I have read only about 30, so I am behind on my reading!
For the 2022-2023 school year, here are the states with the largest number of banned books:
Florida 1406
Texas 625
Missouri 333
Utah 281
Pennsylvania 186
South Carolina 127
Virginia 75
North Carolina 58
hello. I have only read five of them but I come and live in a non-English speaking country,Bulgaria. So, I read books by Bulgarian and a lot of other nationality authors. Also, I have read a lot of British and American books. I wonder about the reason the books in your list have been banned.Obviously there
different standards in different states.
These days it is mostly books about transgender and gay people and sex. The older books were banned because of whatever threatened the religious right back then.
I have read 25. I guess I am 25% literate (or illitererate).
I think that is pretty darn good! I just feel that as a former English teacher, English major etc., I should have read more of them! Some people have probably read none….not the people who read this blog, though!