What books have caused the most hand-wringing over the past decade? As part of Banned Book Week, the American Library Association (ALA) combed through censorship reports from the past ten years to determine the top 100 books requested to be banished from shelves in the United States.
At the top of the pile is Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” with titles by John Green, Toni Morrison, Harper Lee and Jeannette Walls ranking in the top 20.
Toni Morrison
Compiled from both public and confidential data gathered by the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, the list provides but a glimpse into the stacks of complaints against the written word, with a whopping 82-97% of challenges (as defined by the ALA as “an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group”) going unreported.
Most of the books challenged do not get stripped from circulation, the nonprofit notes on its website, pointing to the “commitment of librarians, teachers, parents, students and other concerned citizens” as a protective barrier.
Harper Lee
“The list includes books challenged for a variety of reasons: LGBTQIA+ content, sexual references, religious viewpoints, content that addresses racism and police brutality, and profanity,” the ALA explained. “Although the reasons differ, the censorship of literature in libraries share a common result: the violation of our First Amendment rights.”
The ALA will also present a series of virtual events through Oct. 3 as part of Banned Book Week with the aim of rallying “readers to the cause of First Amendment protections and remind them to remain vigilant about continual threats to our freedom to read.” This year’s theme is “Censorship is a Dead End. Find Your Freedom to Read.”
Here are the titles included in the American Library Association’s “Top 100 Most Banned and Challenged Books: 2010-2019”:
- “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
- “A 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
By Britt Stigler in partnership with ALL ARTS. Stigler is the senior digital content editor at ALL ARTS. She can be reached at StiglerB@thirteen.org.