September 28, 2020, 12:09pm
The results are in, and the list of most challenged books from the last decade is a mix of American classics, LGBTQ-themed books, and stories about female agency and empowerment. In other words, all the books that we should be reading all the time.
Kicking off Banned Books Week, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom released the list on Sunday based on the censorship reports it reviewed from 2010-19. Some of the titles here aren’t really a surprise (not the first rodeo for Lolita), while others seem a little more puzzling—what did Adam Mansbach ever do to us? Stories about dystopia (Feed, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Giver) continue to get resistance, almost like they have important points to make about the dystopia where we live now.
Here’s the list:
1. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
2. Captain Underpants (series) by Dav Pilkey
3. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
4. Looking for Alaska by John Green
5. George by Alex Gino
6. And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
7. Drama by Raina Telgemeier
8. Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James
9. Internet Girls (series) by Lauren Myracle
10. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
11. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
12. Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
13. I Am Jazz by Jazz Jennings and Jessica Herthel
14. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
15. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
16. Bone (series) by Jeff Smith
17. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
18. Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan
19. A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss
20. Sex is a Funny Word by Cory Silverberg
21. Alice McKinley (series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
22. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie H. Harris
23. Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
24. Scary Stories (series) by Alvin Schwartz
25. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
26. A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
27. Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin
28. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
29. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
30. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
31. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
32. It’s a Book by Lane Smith
33. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
34. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
35. What My Mother Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones
36. A Child Called “It” by Dave Pelzer
37. Bad Kitty (series) by Nick Bruel
38. Crank by Ellen Hopkins
39. Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
40. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
41. The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby by Dav Pilkey
42. This Day in June by Gayle E. Pitman
43. This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki
44. A Bad Boy Can Be Good For A Girl by Tanya Lee Stone
45. Beloved by Toni Morrison
46. Goosebumps (series) by R.L. Stine
47. In Our Mothers’ House by Patricia Polacco
48. Lush by Natasha Friend
49. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
50. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
51. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
52. The Holy Bible
53. This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson
54. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
55. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
56. Gossip Girl (series) by Cecily von Ziegesar
57. House of Night (series) by P.C. Cast
58. My Mom’s Having A Baby by Dori Hillestad Butler
59. Neonomicon by Alan Moore
60. The Dirty Cowboy by Amy Timberlake
61. The Giver by Lois Lowry
62. Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
63. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
64. Draw Me a Star by Eric Carle
65. Dreaming In Cuban by Cristina Garcia
66. Fade by Lisa McMann
67. The Family Book by Todd Parr
68. Feed by M.T. Anderson
69. Go the Fuck to Sleep by Adam Mansbach
70. Habibi by Craig Thompson
71. House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
72. Jacob’s New Dress by Sarah Hoffman
73. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
74. Monster by Walter Dean Myers
75. Nasreen’s Secret School by Jeanette Winter
76. Saga by Brian K. Vaughan
77. Stuck in the Middle by Ariel Schrag
78. The Kingdom of Little Wounds by Susann Cokal
79. 1984 by George Orwell
80. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
81. Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher
82. Awakening by Kate Chopin
83. Burned by Ellen Hopkins
84. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
85. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
86. Glass by Ellen Hopkins
87. Heather Has Two Mommies by Lesle´a Newman
88. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
89. Madeline and the Gypsies by Ludwig Bemelmans
90. My Princess Boy by Cheryl Kilodavis
91. Prince and Knight by Daniel Haack
92. Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology by Amy Sonnie
93. Skippyjon Jones (series) by Judith Schachner
94. So Far from the Bamboo Grove by Yoko Kawashima Watkins
95. The Color of Earth (series) by Tong-hwa Kim
96. The Librarian of Basra by Jeanette Winter
97. The Walking Dead (series) by Robert Kirkman
98. Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
99. Uncle Bobby’s Wedding by Sarah S Brannen
100. Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks