Banned Books
Books will occasionally spark controversy and even anger. Often when that happens some people will call for that book to be banned and removed from local libraries and school. Sometimes it progresses to people being willing to burn these books to make their points heard. Here is a list of some of the books that have been banned at one time or another around the country.
| Banned Books | ||
| Anaya, Rudolfo | ||
| Bless Me Ultima 1972 | ||
| Angelou, Maya | ||
| I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 1972 | ||
| Anonymous | ||
| Go Ask Alice 1971 | ||
| Based on the diary of a fifteen-year-old drug user chronicling her struggle to escape the pull of the drug world. | ||
| Atwood, Margaret | ||
| The Handmaid's Tale 1986 | ||
| Blume, Judy | ||
| Deenie 1973 | ||
| A thirteen-year-old girl seemingly destined for a modeling career finds she has a deformation of the spine called scoliosis. | ||
| Blume, Judy | ||
| Forever 1975 | ||
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Two high school seniors believe their love to be so strong that it will last forever. | |
| Blume, Judy | ||
| Tiger Eyes 1981 | ||
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Resettled in the "Bomb City" with her mother and brother, Davey Wexler recovers from the shock of her father's death during a holdup of his 7-Eleven store in Atlantic City. | |
| Collier, James Lincoln | ||
| My Brother Sam is Dead 1974 | ||
| Recounts the tragedy that strikes the Meeker family during the Revolution when one son joins the rebel forces while the rest of the family tries to stay neutral in a Tory town. | ||
| Cormier, Robert | ||
| The Chocolate War 1974 | ||
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A high school freshman discovers the devastating consequences of refusing to join in the school's annual fund raising drive and arousing the wrath of the school bullies. | |
| Cormier, Robert | ||
| I Am The Cheese 1977 | ||
| A young boy desperately tries to unlock his past yet knows he must hide those memories if he is to remain alive. | ||
| Cormier, Robert | ||
| We All Fall Down 1991 | ||
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| Duncan, Lois | ||
| Killing Mr. Griffin 1978 | ||
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A teenager casually suggests playing a cruel trick on the English teacher, but did he intend it to end with murder? | |
| Frank, Anne | ||
| Garden, Nancy | ||
| Annie on My Mind 1982 | ||
| Liza puts aside her feelings for Annie after the disaster at school, but eventually she allows love to triumph over the ignorance of people. | ||
| Golding, William | ||
| Lord of the Flies 1954 | ||
| Green, Bette | ||
| Sheltering an escaped German prisoner of war is the beginning of some shattering experiences for a 12-year-old Jewish girl in Arkansas. | ||
| Hawthorne, Nathaniel | ||
The Scarlet Letter 1850 |
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| Heller, Joseph | ||
Catch-22: A Novel 1961 |
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| Hinton, S.E. | ||
| The Outsiders 1967 | ||
| The struggle of three brothers to stay together after their parent's death and their quest for identity among the conflicting values of their adolescent society. | ||
| Hinton, S.E. | ||
| That Was Then, This is Now 1971 | ||
| Sixteen-year-old Mark and Bryon have been like brothers since childhood, but now, as their involvement with girls, gangs, and drugs increases, their relationship seems to gradually disintegrate. | ||
| Kesey, Ken | ||
| One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 1962 | ||
| The story of a man whose rebelliousness pits him against the head nurse of a mental ward and the full spectrum of institutional repression. | ||
| Lee, Harper | ||
| To Kill a Mockingbird 1960 | ||
| Two children in a small southern town are thrust into an adult world of racial bigotry and hatred when their lawyer father chooses to defend a black man unjustly accused of raping a white girl. | ||
| Lowry, Lois | ||
| The Giver 1993 | ||
| Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives. | ||
| Myers, Dean Walter | ||
| Fallen Angels 1988 | ||
| Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out of his Harlem high school, enlists in the Army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year on active duty in Vietnam. | ||
| Orwell, George | ||
| Animal Farm 1945 | ||
| Orwell, George | ||
| Nineteen Eighty-Four 1949 | ||
| Peck, Robert Newton | ||
| A Day No Pigs Would Die 1972 | ||
| To a thirteen-year-old Vermont farm boy whose father slaughters pigs for a living, maturity comes early as he learns "doing what's got to be done," especially regarding his pet pig who cannot produce a litter. | ||
| Rowling, J.K. | ||
| Harry Potter Series 1997-2007 | ||
| Salinger, J.D. | ||
| The Catcher in the Rye 1951 | ||
| Holden, knowing that he is to be expelled from school, decides to leave early. He spends three days in New York City and tells the story of what he did and suffered there. | ||
| Steinbeck, John | ||
| The Grapes of Wrath 1939 | ||
| The migration of the Joad family to California from their dust-bowl farm in Oklahoma during the Great Depression. | ||
| Steinbeck, John | ||
| Of Mice and Men 1937 | ||
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| Trumbo, Dalton | ||
| Johnny Got His Gun 1939 | ||
| In 1918 a soldier to badly wounded and has both his arms and legs amputated. Plunged into a chilling nightmare, we hear the youngt war victim's thoughts. | ||
| Twain, Mark | ||
| The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1884 | ||
| The adventures of a young boy traveling down the Mississippi Rover with an escaped slave. | ||
| Twain, Mark | ||
| The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1876 | ||
| The adventures and pranks of a mischievous boy growing up in a Mississippi River town in the early nineteenth century. | ||
| Zindel, Paul | ||
| The Pigman 1968 | ||
| A teenage boy and girl, high school sophomores from unhappy homes, tell of their bizarre relationship with an old man | ||