For as long as there have been libraries, both in the public and in schools, there have been people attempting to get books removed from libraries. Some of these are arguments we know and recognize: the controversies over Harry Potter and Twilight, the arguments over whether The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should be removed from the school curriculum or whether one simply needed an edition that sanitized the use of a certain racial slur. Some are less publicized: many people are unaware, for instance, that between 2001 and 2009, one of the most perennially challenged books wasn't any of the series that attracted the flashy news stories, but The Chocolate War. Whether they are classics and bestsellers or self-published pieces and obscure stories, challenged books have spanned the ages and the reading levels from Skippyjon Jones to the Bible.
One of the central tenets of librarianship, as regularly emphasized by the American Library Association, is opposing censorship; telling people that removing these books not only is not our job. It may seem easy to judge books on the surface - this one is badly written anyway, that one is too shallow, that one revels in violence at the expense of everything else - but there is no book that cannot help someone, somehow, even if all it does it get them to read where other books did not.
Banned Books Week is our chance to show off these questioned books. What is this book, anyway? Why did they try to ban it? Some of these may be genuinely disturbing; some simply embrace ideas that people disagree with. We encourage you to read them for yourselves.Our list is separated by target audience into adult, young adult and juvenile. Each includes the years they were on the Top 10 Challenged Books list (from 2001 to the present), the reasons why they were challenged, and a brief summary. Only books that appear in our collection were included, so some Top 10 titles will be missing. We promise that if they were removed from the collection, it was from lack of circulation, not anyone's protest. All records are linked to our online catalog, so you can check the book's availability; records for book series are generally linked to the first title in the series. As always, the front desk is ready to help you find anything you might be looking for.
Do you want to learn more?
The ALA talks more about banned books here.
The official Top Ten Challenged Books lists for 2001 to the present are here.
We read banned books. Do you?
