next »

[crazybatlady]

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
Forever by Judy Blume
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Giver by Lois Lowry
It's Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
The Goosebumps Series by R.L. Stine
A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Earth's Children Series by Jean M. Auel
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
The Witches by Roald Dahl
Blubber by Judy Blume
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Native Son by Richard Wright
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

[spork]

Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs.

[madame_librarian]

The American Library Association (in the forefront of fighting censhorship) maintains a great site on challenged and banned books:
http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/challengedbanned/challengedbanned.htm

You can see what books/authors were most frequently challenged in 2006 as well as view a historical perspective going back to 1990.

[snape]

James and the Giant Peach was banned?

[zharkov]

James and the Giant Peach was banned?

A more precise word would be challenged, perhaps by parents or a school board, with the typical intent of removing a book from a library or school library.

A book that was banned was Kathy Acker's Blood and Guts in High School, which was banned in Germany.

[snape]

James and the Giant Peach was banned?

A more precise word would be challenged, perhaps by parents or a school board, with the typical intent of removing a book from a library or school library.

A book that was banned was Kathy Acker's Blood and Guts in High School, which was banned in Germany.

I'm baffled. My teacher read this to us in Grade 1.

[kitmonk]

Wow.  Some of the books on this list are just..... wow. 

It seems whenever I hear about a book that's been challenged or banned, it's generally on the grounds that the book is somehow either grossly offensive (e.g. Huck Finn because of the "racist" language) or somehow morally inappropriate (e.g. Heather Has Two Mommies).  What surprised be most about this list, then, was the number of books that seem to be on it simply because they deal with topics that aren't all happiness and light.  The Great Gilly Hopkins, for example, has nothing in it that is likely to be seen as immoral or offensive, but it deals with tough issues like abandonment and foster care.  James and the Giant Peach, meanwhile, is about a plucky little boy who hatches a plot to get back at his horrible aunt.  It's amazing how much adults underestimate what kids can handle and understand!

[mchap11]

Perhaps a side-bar: books that should be banned--The Last of the Mohicans and anything else by James Fenimore Cooper: Mr. Clemens's famous essay really spells it out.  Those 19th century writers really knew how to blast one another . . . a lost art, unfortunately.

[walker_percy]

Hal Leonard: Saxophone Technique, Level 1

[outlander]

I'm absolutely stunned by most of those.

The Earth's Children series??
A Light in the Attic??

How ridiculous.  I'm speechless.

O.

[francie_]

Well, there's much precedent for banning books.  Here's the Wikipedia link to a discussion of the Index, the Mother of All Banned Book Lists.  External links take you to the complete list as of 1948.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum

And another link:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/indexlibrorum.html

[johngriff]

Awesome, just what we need.

If you can extinguish the spark, that will light the flame, you will never have a fire.

Where do I sign up?

[margomcp]

There's always somebody somewhere that doesn't like any given book?  And some books get "banned" for certain reasons/readers/situations.  I thought, since it was pinned, that this list meant we weren't supposed to talk about these books here :-)  That would be a form of banning.

[fluff1955]

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, is one of the best books I have ever read!  I read it first in high school, and it is one of the few books I have read more than once.  The Harry Potter series is simply wildly entertaining!  What gives here?  What will be left to read, as this list gets longer and longer?

[engineer_adrift]

CBL,

What was the source /context of the original list you posted?

Best wishes.