I was gratified by the responses my blog post of last Monday received. Thank you to everyone who responded, and thank you to the ones of you who reblogged my post about book banning. In case you missed it, here’s the link: Book Banning is Democracy Banning!

In last week’s post I listed the 19 books that had been banned the week before by the school board in Hanover County, Virginia. I failed to list other books or tell you how you can find lists of other books that have been challenged in the United States.

You can simply put “Challenged Books” or “Banned Books” in your favorite online search engine. Or, you can look for reputable sites like the American Library Association’s website for intellectual freedom: https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/

Barnes and Noble has a list of more than 230 challenged books on its website at https://www.barnesandnoble.com/b/banned-books/_/N-rtm.

Let’s flood our public library systems and bookstores with requests for such books! Here’s a partial list. You might find many others when you do your own search. The following list of 101 books that have been challenged or banned somewhere in the United States is in no particular order.

Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

They Both Die at the End, by Adam Silvera

What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self, by Ellyn Spragins

The Giver, by Lois Lowry

1984, by George Orwell

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling

Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History, by Art Spiegelman

Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, by Julia Alvarez

New Kid, by Jerry Craft

Animal Farm, by George Orwell

The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini

The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood

My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult

The Dairy of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank

The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, by Nicole Hannah-Jones

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas and Amandla Stenberg

Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck

Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

This Book is Gay, by Juno Dawaon and David Levit

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou

Gender Queer: A Memoir, by Maia Kobabe

Hop on Pop, by Dr. Seuss

Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston

How the Word is Passed, by Clint Smith

Twilight, by Stephanie Meye

Beloved, (a Pulitzer Prize Winner) by Toni Morrison

The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett

Girl, Interrupted, by Susanna Kaysen

Where the Sidewalk Ends, by Shel Silverstein

The Grapes of Wrath, (a Pulitzer Prize Winner), by John Steinbeck

The Color Purple, by Alice Walker

Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson

Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie

All American Boys, by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley

A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway

The Poet X, by Elizabeth Acevedo

Looking for Alaska, by John Green

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, by Margane Satrapi

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt

Class Act: A Graphic Novel, by Jerry Craft

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey

Monday’s Not Coming, by Tiffany D. Jackson

Fifty Shades of Grey, by E.L. James

The Other Wes Moore, by Wes Moore

Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel

What If It’s Us, by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera

A Time to Kill, by John Grisham

A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest J. Gaines

The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown

And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell

Child of God, by Cormac McCarthy

Feed, by M.T. Anderson

A Separate Peace, by John Knowles

Stamped from the Beginning, by Ibram X. Kendi

Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous

Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein

Different Seasons, by Stephen King

For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway

The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien

Native Son, by Richard Wright

Angela Davis: An Autobiography, by Angela Y. Davis

Skeleton Crew: Stories, by Stephen King

Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-Winning Stamped from the Beginning, by Jason Reynolds and Ibram S. Kendi

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens, by Becky Albertalli

All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir, by George M. Johnson

The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane

Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen

The Prince of Tides, by Pat Conroy

Tiger Eyes, by Judy Blume

Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1719-2019, by Ibram X. Kendi, Keisha N. Blain

A Thousand Acres, a Pulitzer Prize Winner, by Jane Smiley

Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth’s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa, by Mark Mathabane

Beach Music, by Pat Conroy

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain

Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, a Pulitzer Prize Winner, by Heather Ann Thompson

The Tenth Circle, by Jodi Picoult

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair

Girl With the Blue Earring, by Tracy Chevalier

Catch-22, by Joseph Heller

Palestine, by Joe Sacco

Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

Bridge to Terabithia, A Newberry Award Winner, by Katherine Peterson

The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway

Addie on the Inside, by James Howe

Call of the Wild, by Jack London

Olive’s Ocean, a Newberry Honor Book, by Kevin Henkes

A Stone in My Hand, by Cathryn Clinton

Tilt, by Ellen Hopkins

How Often Are Books Challenged Where You Live?

There is an interactive map of the United States of the American Library Association’s website, https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/by-the-numbers. Hover the curser over a state to find basic information about book challenges in that state in 2022.

For instance, in my home state of North Carolina, there were 32 attempts to restrict access to books last year involving 167 titles. The most challenged book in North Carolina was Looking for Alaska, by John Green.

That map revealed some surprises. There were 45 attempts to restrict access to books in Massachusetts last year involving 57 books. In Michigan, the figures were 54 and 359. In Pennsylvania, 56 and 302. In Florida, 35 and 991. But Texas was at the top of the list (or bottom as the case may be) with 93 attempts to restrict access to books in 2022 involving a whopping 2,349 titles!

Different books are listed as the most-challenged book in the various states; however, Florida and Texas agree on The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison. I wrote about that book in my blog post last week. I want to say to the book challengers in Florida and Texas, “You’ve got to be kidding!”

If you want to read more about the topic of book banning…

Here’s the link to the website of PEN America. PEN America is made up of more than 7,500 novelists, journalists, nonfiction writers, editors, poets, essayists, playwrights, publishers, translators, agents, and other writing professionals, as well as devoted readers and supporters who join with them to carry out PEN America’s mission to protect free expression in the United States and around the world: https://pen.org/report/banned-in-the-usa-state-laws-supercharge-book-suppression-in-schools/.  

Until my next blog post

I hope you’re reading a book that someone has tried to get banned from a library. Let’s flood our public library systems and bookstores with requests for books that someone doesn’t want us to read!

I hope you make time for friends and family. Read to the children in your life and encourage them to read for fun.

Stop right now and visit my website (https://janetmorrisonbooks.com/) to subscribe to my newsletter. I took a special “field trip” to benefit my historical fiction writing on May 20. I’ll tell you all it in my July newsletter!

Just for signing up, you’ll receive a free downloadable copy of “Slip Sliding Away: A Southern Historical Short Story” to give you a taste of my fiction writing.

Remember the brave people of Ukraine.

Janet