Next week is National Banned Books Week or, as the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) calls it, a “celebration of the freedom to read.” So, in the spirit of all things books and words and writing and creativity and ideas, let’s all read banned books!
To that end, below is a list of banned books from the NCAC’s Banned Books Catalog (click here for the full text that includes each book’s “indiscretion”).
So, tell me, which book will YOU read?
Sherman Alexie
Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Isabel Allende
The House of the Spirits
Dorothy Allison
Bastard Out of Carolina
Julia Alvarez
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
Laurie Halse Anderson
Speak
M.T. Anderson
Feed
Maya Angelou
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid’s Tale
James Baldwin
Go Tell It On The Mountain
Alison Bechdel
Fun Home
Judy Blume
Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret, Deeny, Then Again Maybe I Won’t, Forever, Places I Never Meant To Be
Anthony Burgess
Clockwork Orange
Augusten Burroughs
Running with Scissors
William S. Burroughs
Naked Lunch
Stephen Chbosky
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
John Cleland
Fanny Hill
Daniel Clowes
Ice Haven (Eightball #22)
Suzzane Collins
The Hunger Games
Robert Cormier
The Chocolate War, I am the Cheese
Howard Cruse
Stuck Rubber Baby
Chris Crutcher
Whale Talk, Chinese Handcuffs
Roald Dahl
The Witches
Emily M. Danforth
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Charles Darwin
The Origin of Species
Corey Doctorow
Little Brother
Barbara Ehrenreich
Nickel and Dimed
Laura Esquirel
Like Water for Chocolate
Marcus Ewert
10,000 Dresses
William Faulkner
As I Lay Dying
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby
Anne Frank
The Diary Of A Young Girl
Neil Gaiman
Neverwhere, Absolute Sandman
Nancy Garden
Annie on My Mind
Jean Craighead George
Julie of the Wolves
Allen Ginsberg
Howl
William Golding
Lord of the Flies
John Green
Looking For Alaska, Paper Towns
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Fairy Tales
Robie Harris
It’s Perfectly Normal
Joseph Heller
Catch-22
Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms
Carolivia Herron
Nappy Hair
S. E. Hinton
The Outsiders
Khaled Hosseni
The Kite Runner
Zora Neale Hurston
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Aldous Huxley
Brave New World
Kim Dong Hwa
The Color of Earth
E.L. James
Fifty Shades of Grey
James Joyce
Ulysses
Norton Juster
The Phantom Tollbooth
Ken Kesey
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Stephen King
Apt Pupil
D.H. Lawrence
Women in Love, Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Harper Lee
To Kill A Mockingbird
David Levithan
Two Boys Kissing
Mathew Loux
Sidescrollers
Lois Lowry
The Giver
Carolyn Mackler
The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things
Haruki Murakami
Norwegian Wood
Alan Moore
Neonomicon, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier, Watchmen
Toni Morrison
Beloved
Walter Dean Myers
Fallen Angels, Monster
Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita
Lesléa Newman
Heather Has Two Mommies
George Orwell
1984
Chuck Palahniuk
Choke
Todd Parr
The Family Book
Philip Pullman
The Golden Compass
Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
And Tango Makes Three
Katherine Paterson
Bridge to Terabithia
Dav Pilkey
Captain Underpants
Patricia Polacco
In Our Mothers’ House
Tomás Rivera
…And the Earth Did Not Devour Him
J.K Rowling
Harry Potter
J.D. Salinger
Catcher in the Rye, Nine Stories
Marjane Satrapi
The Complete Persepolis
Dr. Seuss
The Lorax
William Shakespeare
The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night
Neal Shusterman
UnWholly
Shel Silverstein
A Light in the Attic
Curtis Sittenfeld
Prep
Art Spiegelman
Maus
John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men
R.L. Stine
Goosebumps
Makoto Tateno
Hero Heels 2
Amy Timberlake
The Dirty Cowboy
Craig Thompson
Blankets
J.R.R. Tolkien
Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Terry Trueman
Stuck in Neutral
Mark Twain
Huckleberry Finn
Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse 5
Alice Walker
The Color Purple
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
Daniel Wilson
Robopocalypse
Richard Wright
Black Boy, Native Son
Heck, I’ve already read a bunch of those! Somebody better ban ME, or I might go around telling people what they said. :-)
Shhhhhh. I won’t tell. Or…yes I will!
I have read a few of those listed and many others that WOULD be banned if the judgmental ones knew they existed and had their way.
That’s so true!
What requirements make a book banned?
Apparently, the requirement is as simple as “some people don’t like it.” WOW – right? If you read the explanations in the catalog (see link in text), reasons cited include the use of certain words (masturbation, gasp!), content deemed immoral or graphic or inappropriate, use of profanity, sexual content, instigation of nightmares, questioning of authority, promotion of socialist ideas, discussion of homosexuality, appearance of anti-family sentiment. It goes on an on. Shameful.
Oh.. I’m a little lawless and a mild rule breaker. I hate being told what to do.. I have no problem breaking their rules! LOL I just want to read about what’s REAL! Realistic novels.
I respect rules but LOVE to break them – and secretly wish I did that much more often!! :)
Certain words? Masturbation? What? Get those words off of prime time tv, will ya!
Read lots of these. I guess I’m in the gutter. All in! I just downloaded a sample of Native Son. (Sample? I’m cheap that way. If I like it, I’m – ah – all in!)
;-)
I knew you were trouble!
Nooooo. Not me! ;-)
Astonished to find that I have already read a bunch of these already.
Renegade!
I must not have proofed the comment. That is what I get for reading and commenting late at night.
Was there a typo? I didn’t see anything…
Two alreadys
That’s not a typo. That’s “emphasis” – LOL
LOL–when I first read the headline I mistook “Banned” for “Damned” :-) Slightly different message, eh?
I’ll say one thing–if you have to ban a book, you’ve already lost. Writers know that!
That’s sooooo true!! : )
So many good books are on this list. The biggest reason kids don’t like to read is the fact that schools only let them read books they know are sugar coated stories. Let them read the real stuff, the stuff that teaches them about life and the world around them and we’d have a new generation of voracious readers. I can’t believe they even banned YA writers like Suzanne Collins and John Green.
I just got done reading ” I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” and it was incredible (can’t believe it took me this long to read it). Every kid should read that book!
It’s all about fear, right? Fear they might gain a new (different) perspective, might think for themselves? Let them read the real stuff indeed!
p.s. Judy Blume??? Really? She was the only writer that made me feel normal when I was 13.
I just read one of her adult books, and truly, it was like reconnecting with an old friend. Like you, she made me feel “normal” when nothing and no one else did!