Friends of Montclair Library

Banned Books Week isn’t until September, but lately every week is starting to look like Banned Books Week with all the challenges to books and libraries (including actual book burnings) around the country.

After you’ve taken a minute to learn about the deeper issues behind book banning and some ways to fight it, or maybe even formed your own banned book book club, check out one of these 14 books spotlighted by The Atlantic recently as frequently banned or challenged. As Emma Sarappo writes, “The following 14 books employ difficult, sometimes upsetting imagery to tell complicated stories. That approach has made them some of the most frequently challenged, or outright banned, books in America’s schools; it also makes them perfect examples of what literature is supposed to do.”

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
Heather Has Two Mommies by Lesléa Newman
Maus by Art Spiegelman
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson

Book burning photo by Patrick Correia via Creative Commons