ATL: Banned Books Week 2024

Created on August 14, 2024, 8:28 am

Last Updated September 20, 2024, 1:17 pm

Banned Books Week, September 22-28, celebrates the freedom to read and spotlights current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools. Books are still being banned and challenged today. A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials from a collection in response to a formal or informal challenge. The American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) documented 4,240 unique book titles targeted for censorship, as well as 1,247 demands to censor library books, materials, and resources in 2023. The number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries increased by 92% over the previous year, accounting for about 46% of all book challenges in 2023; school libraries saw an 11% increase over 2022 numbers. Of the 4,240 unique titles that were challenged or banned in 2023, here are the top 10 most challenged. Learn more at ala.org/bbooks

1) Gender queer: a memoir

Author

Kobabe, Maia

Series

Gender Queer A Memoir

Notes

Number of challenges: 106 Challenged for: LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit

Formats:

eComic, Graphic Novel

Description

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"In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia's intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to...

2) All boys aren't blue: a memoir-manifesto

Author

Johnson, George M

Notes

Number of challenges: 82 Challenged for: LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit

Description

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In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys.

3) This book is gay

Author

Dawson, Juno

Notes

Number of challenges: 71 Challenged for: LGBTQIA+ content, sex education, claimed to be sexually explicit

Description

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"There's a long-running joke that, after coming out as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or intersex person, you should receive a membership card and instruction manual. This is that instruction manual. You're welcome. Inside this revised and updated edition, you'll find the answers to all the questions you ever wanted to ask: from sex to politics, hooking up to stereotypes, coming out and more. This candid, funny, and uncensored exploration...

4) The perks of being a wallflower

Author

Chbosky, Stephen

Notes

Number of challenges: 68 Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit, LGBTQIA+ content, rape, drugs, profanity

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook

Description

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A haunting coming of age novel told in a series of letters to an unknown correspondent reveals the life of Charlie, a freshman in high school who is a wallflower, shy and introspective, and very intelligent, it's a story of what it's like to grow up in high school, tracing a course through uncharted territory in the world of first dates, family dramas and new friends.

5) Flamer

Author

Curato, Mike

Notes

Number of challenges: 67 Challenged for: LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit

Description

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"It's the summer between middle school and high school, and Aiden Navarro is away at camp. Everyone's going through changes--but for Aiden, the stakes feel higher. As he navigates friendships, deals with bullies, and spends time with Elias (a boy he can't stop thinking about), he finds himself on a path of self-discovery and acceptance."--Provided by publisher.

6) The bluest eye

Author

Morrison, Toni

Series

Vintage International

Notes

Number of challenges: 62 Challenged for: rape, incest, claimed to be sexually explicit, EDI conten

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eBook, Kindle

Description

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"It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment." -- Book jacket.

7) Me and Earl and the dying girl: a novel

Author

Andrews, Jesse

Notes

Number of challenges: 56 Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit, profanity

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

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Greg Gaines is the last master of high school espionage, able to disappear at will into any social environment. He has only one friend, Earl, and together they spend their time making movies, their own incomprehensible versions of Coppola and Herzog cult classics. Until Greg's mother forces him to rekindle his childhood friendship with Rachel. Rachel has been diagnosed with leukemia -- cue extreme adolescent awkwardness -- but a parental mandate has...

8) Tricks

Author

Hopkins, Ellen

Notes

Number of challenges: 56 Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit, drugs, rape, LGBTQIA+ content

Description

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Five troubled teenagers fall into prostitution as they search for freedom, safety, community, family, and love.

9) Let's talk about it: the teen's guide to sex, relationships, and being a human

Author

Moen, Erika

Notes

Number of challenges: 55 Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit, sex education, LGBTQIA+ content

Description

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"A graphic novel about sex, sexuality, gender, body, consent, and many other topics for teens"--

10) Sold

Author

McCormick, Patricia

Notes

Number of challenges: 53 Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit, rape

Description

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Thirteen-year-old Lakshmi, though poor, enjoys her life until the Himalayan monsoons wash away her family's crops and she is sold to a brothel in India by her stepfather. She remembers her mother's wisdom, "Simply to endure is to triumph," until the day comes that she can reclaim her life.