Banned Books

Ready to check out more banned books? This list covers recently and frequently banned books!

Showing 1 - 20 of 23  There are a total of 96 valid entries on the list.

1. 1984

Book cover for "1984"
Star rating for 1984
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Notes:
TOP 100 MOST BANNED AND CHALLENGED BOOKS: 2010-2019
Description:
Portrays life in a future time when a totalitarian government watches over all citizens and directs all activities. Written 75 years ago, 1984 was George Orwell's chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative is timelier than ever... "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."...
Book cover for "And Tango makes three"
Star rating for And Tango makes three
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Notes:
TOP 10 MOST CHALLENGED BOOKS LIST 2019, 2017, 2014, 2012, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006
Description:
At New York City's Central Park Zoo, two male penguins fall in love and start a family by taking turns sitting on an abandoned egg until it hatches.
Book cover for "Beloved"
Star rating for Beloved
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Notes:
TOP 100 MOST BANNED AND CHALLENGED BOOKS: 1990-2019
Description:
After Paul D. finds his old slave friend Sethe in Ohio and moves in with her and her daughter Denver, a strange girl comes along by the name of "Beloved." Sethe and Denver take her in and then strange things begin to happen. Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War, this profoundly affecting chronicle of slavery and its aftermath is Toni Morrison's greatest novel, a dazzling achievement, and the most spellbinding reading experience of the...
Book cover for "The bluest eye"
Star rating for The bluest eye
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Notes:
TOP 13 MOST CHALLENGED BOOKS LIST 2022; TOP 10 MOST CHALLENGED BOOKS LIST 2021, 2020, 2014, 2013, 2006
Description:
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 cover for "Brave new world"
Star rating for Brave new world
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Notes:
TOP 10 MOST CHALLENGED BOOKS LIST 2011, 2010
Description:
Huxley's classic prophetic novel describes the socialized horrors of a futuristic utopia devoid of individual freedom. First published 70 years ago, the classic, prophetic novel capturing the socialized horrors of a futuristic utopia remarkably explores the now-timely themes of cloning, individual creativity and freedom, and the role of science, technology, and drugs in humankind's future.
Book cover for "The catcher in the rye"
Star rating for The catcher in the rye
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Notes:
TOP 10 MOST CHALLENGED BOOKS LIST 2009, 2005, 2001
Description:
In an effort to escape the hypocrisies of life at his boarding school, sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield seeks refuge in New York City Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life, just after he's been expelled from prep school.
Book cover for "A clockwork orange"
Star rating for A clockwork orange
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Notes:
TOP 100 MOST BANNED AND CHALLENGED BOOKS: 2010-2019
Description:

A vicious fifteen-year-old droog is the central character of this 1963 classic. In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. And when the state undertakes

...
Book cover for "The color purple"
Star rating for The color purple
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Notes:
TOP 10 MOST CHALLENGED BOOKS LIST 2009, 2007
Description:
The lives of two sisters--Nettie, a missionary in Africa, and Celie, a Southern woman married to a man she hates--are revealed in a series of letters exchanged over thirty years. "Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence"--Back cover.
Book cover for "A court of mist and fury"
Star rating for A court of mist and fury
Series:
Average Rating:
4.7 stars
Notes:
TOP 13 MOST CHALLENGED BOOKS OF 2022. BOOK 1 IN SERIES IS A COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES
Description:
Though Feyre now has the powers of the High Fae, her heart remains human, but as she navigates the feared Night Court's dark web of politics, passion, and dazzling power, a greater evil looms--and she might be key to stopping it.
Book cover for "The curious incident of the dog in the night-time"
Star rating for The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Average Rating:
4 stars
Notes:
TOP 10 MOST CHALLENGED BOOKS LIST 2015
Description:
Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother.
Book cover for "Draw me a star"
Star rating for Draw me a star
Author:
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Notes:
TOP 100 MOST BANNED AND CHALLENGED BOOKS: 2000-2019
Description:
An artist's drawing of a star begins the creation of an entire universe around him as each successive pictured object requests that he draw more.
Book cover for "Dreaming in Cuban"
Star rating for Dreaming in Cuban
Average Rating:
2.5 stars
Notes:
TOP 100 MOST BANNED AND CHALLENGED BOOKS: 2010-2019
Book cover for "Ender's game"
Star rating for Ender's game
Series:
Ender Wiggin volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.6 stars
Notes:
TOP 100 MOST BANNED AND CHALLENGED BOOKS: 2010-2019
Description:
Child hero Ender Wiggin must fight a desperate battle against a deadly alien race if mankind is to survive.
Book cover for "Extremely loud & incredibly close"
Star rating for Extremely loud & incredibly close
Average Rating:
3.4 stars
Notes:
TOP 100 MOST BANNED AND CHALLENGED BOOKS: 2010-2019
Description:
Oskar Schell, the nine-year-old son of a man killed in the World Trade Center attacks, searches the five boroughs of New York City for a lock that fits a black key his father left behind. "Oskar Schell is an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father,...
Book cover for "Fifty shades of Grey"
Star rating for Fifty shades of Grey
Author:
Series:
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Notes:
TOP 10 MOST CHALLENGED BOOKS LIST 2015, 2013, 2012
Description:
When literature student Anastasia Steele is drafted to interview the successful young entrepreneur Christian Grey for her campus magazine, she finds him attractive, enigmatic, and intimidating. Convinced their meeting went badly, she tries to put Grey out of her mind, until he happens to turn up at the out-of-town hardware store where she works part-time.
Book cover for "The handmaid's tale"
Star rating for The handmaid's tale
Series:
Handmaid's tale volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Notes:
TOP 10 MOST CHALLENGED BOOKS LIST 2019
Description:
"This visionary novel. in which God and Government are joined, and America is run as a Puritanical Theoracy, can be read as a companion volume to Orwell's 1984-its verso, in fact. It gives you the same degree of chill, even as it suggests the varieties of tyrannical experience; it evokes the same kind of horror even as its mordant wit makes you smile." E.L.Doctorow.
Book cover for "The kite runner"
Star rating for The kite runner
Average Rating:
4.6 stars
Notes:
TOP 10 MOST CHALLENGED BOOKS LIST 2017, 2014, 2012, 2008
Description:
Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant's son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy through the atrocities of the present day. An epic tale of fathers and sons, of friendship and betrayal, that takes us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the atrocities of the present day. The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy Afghan youth and the...
Book cover for "Lawn boy"
Star rating for Lawn boy
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Notes:
TOP 13 MOST CHALLENGED BOOKS Of 2022, TOP 10 2021
Description:
"Mike Muñoz is a young Mexican American not too many years out of high school--and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew. Though he tries time and again to get his foot on the first rung of that ladder to success, he can't seem to get a break. But then things start to change for Mike, and after a raucous, jarring, and challenging trip, he finds he can finally see the future and his place in it."--

19. Lolita

Book cover for "Lolita"
Star rating for Lolita
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Notes:
TOP 100 MOST BANNED AND CHALLENGED BOOKS: 2010-2019
Description:
A novel that studies the moral disintegration of a man whose obsessive desire to possess his step-daughter destroys the lives of those around him The most controversial classic novel of the 20th century, Lolita tells the story of Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man who is aroused to erotic desire only by a young girl. Awe and exhilaration--along with heartbreak and mordant wit--abound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which...
Book cover for "Of mice and men"
Star rating for Of mice and men
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Notes:
TOP 10 MOST CHALLENGED BOOKS LIST 2020, 2004, 2003, 2001
Description:
In the California's 1930', two unlikely friends, Lenny and George, dream of owning a farm together. Now that they've landed a job on a farm in the Salinas Valley, the dream seems within their grasp. But, the boss' son has a flirtatious wife and a few minutes alone with her dashes all hope of their leading a normal life.