The following is a list of books banned in schools and libraries across the US. Honestly, I am not nearly as surprised as I thought I would be, when Poolie brought up the topic, however I am just as disappointed about it. Ive read a LOT of them, and find it upsetting that ANY of them would be banned. The disturbing part is that some of the books have been banned in “public” libraries. Again… freedom of speech should absolutely apply in the case, and honestly if you don’t want to read it… then DON’T! No one is forcing you to read ANYTHING! Don’t want your kids reading it? Then don’t let them! It’s the same as TV folks, don’t like what’s on, then turn it off.

I *was* surprised to learn however, that there is an entire section of the American Library Association dedicated to tracking banned books. Their website is here http:www.ala.org and you can check out the reasons why books have been banned. Most are for sexual content, some for obscenity, and some for grammatical content (for instance, the word nigger in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – of which I own a first ed. copy!) The ALA also has a week celebrating banned books each year, and although this years has already passed by, I shall endeavor to check it out next year! And yes, at the bottom, a dictionary really WAS banned by a school district in upstate New York for having slang definitions for various words. Frightening, isn’t it? Check out your local library on-line to see if they have a list of banned books. (BTW…. I marked with a * everything I had read on the list)

*A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
*A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
*As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
*Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
*Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
*Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
*Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
*Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
*Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
*Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
*Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
**Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
*Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
*Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
*Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
*Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
*Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein
*James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
*Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
*Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
*More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
*Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn(RIP)
*One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
*Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
*Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
*Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
*Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
*The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
*The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
*The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
*The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
*The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
*The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
*The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
*To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
*Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth