Banned Books

2010-2022: American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) and PEN America's Index of School Book Bans

Showing 1 - 15 of 15  There are a total of 381 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Half of a yellow sun"
Star rating for Half of a yellow sun
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
Re-creates the 1960s struggle of Biafra to establish an independent republic in Nigeria, following the intertwined lives of the characters through a military coup, the Biafran secession, and the resulting civil war.
Book cover for "Year of wonders"
Star rating for Year of wonders
Average Rating:
4.9 stars
Description:
In 1666, a young woman comes of age during an extraordinary year of love and death. Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a "plague village" in the rugged hill country of England, "Year of Wonders" is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history, written by the author of "Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women."
Book cover for "Elijah of Buxton"
Star rating for Elijah of Buxton
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
In 1859, eleven-year-old Elijah Freeman, the first free-born child in Buxton, Canada, which is a haven for slaves fleeing the American south, uses his wits and skills to try to bring to justice the lying preacher who has stolen money that was to be used to buy a family's freedom.
Book cover for "The great Gatsby"
Star rating for The great Gatsby
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
Jay Gatsby had once loved beautiful, spoiled Daisy Buchanan, then lost her to a rich boy. Now, mysteriously wealthy, he is ready to risk everything to woo her back. This is the definitive, textually accurate edition of a classic of twentieth-century literature, The Great Gatsby. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan has been acclaimed by generations of readers. But the first edition contained...
Book cover for "Soldier boy"
Star rating for Soldier boy
Description:
Follows Ricky from 1987-1991, and Samuel in 2006, as they are abducted to serve as child-soldiers in Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. Includes historical notes and information about Friends of Orphans, an organization founded by Ricky Richard Anywar, on whose life the story is partly based.
Book cover for "Beloved"
Star rating for Beloved
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
Toni Morrison's fifth novel, which earned her the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The novel traces the journey of Sethe from slavery to freedom during and immediately following the Civil War. Woven into this narrative are the horrible truths of Sethe's past: the cruelties she endured as a slave, and the hardships she suffered in her journey north to freedom
Book cover for "Out of darkness"
Star rating for Out of darkness
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"1937. Naomi Vargas is Mexican American. Wash Fuller is Black. These teens know the town's divisive racism better than anyone. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive. Naomi and Wash dare to defy the rules, and the New London school explosion serves as a ticking time bomb in the background. Can their love survive both prejudice and...
Book cover for "Roll of thunder, hear my cry"
Star rating for Roll of thunder, hear my cry
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
A black family living in Mississippi during the Depression of the 1930s is faced with prejudice and discrimination which its children do not understand.
Book cover for "The cay"
Star rating for The cay
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
When the freighter on which they are traveling is torpedoed by a German submarine during World War II, a twelve-year-old white boy, blinded by a blow on the head, and an old Negro are stranded on a small desert island in the Caribbean where the boy acquires a new kind of vision, courage, and love from his old companion.
Book cover for "The adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
Star rating for The adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
The tale of a boy's picaresque journey down the Mississippi on a raft, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn conveyed the voice and experience of the American frontier as no other work had done before. When Huck escapes from his drunken father and the 'sivilizing' Widow Douglas with the runaway slave Jim, he embarks on a series of adventures that draw him to feuding families and the trickery of the unscrupulous 'Duke' and 'Dauphin'. Beneath the exploits,...
Book cover for "Slaughterhouse-five, or, The children's crusade"
Star rating for Slaughterhouse-five, or, The children's crusade
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
Billy Pilgrim, a chaplain's assistant during the Second World War, returns home only to be kidnapped by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, who teach him that time is an eternal present.
Book cover for "The color purple"
Star rating for The color purple
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
The lives of two sisters -- Nettie, a missionary in Africa, and Celie, a child wife living in the South -- are revealed in a series of letters exchanged over thirty years.
Book cover for "So far from the Bamboo Grove"
Star rating for So far from the Bamboo Grove
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
A fictionalized autobiography in which eleven-year-old Yoko escapes from Korea to Japan with her mother and sister at the end of World War II. Though Japanese, eleven-year-old Yoko has lived with her family in northern Korea near the border with China all her life. But when the Second World War comes to an end, Japanese on the Korean peninsula are suddenly in terrible danger; the Korean people want control of their homeland and they want to punish...
Book cover for "Dragonwings"
Star rating for Dragonwings
Series:
Description:
In the early twentieth century a young Chinese boy joins his father in San Francisco and helps him realize his dream of making a flying machine.
Book cover for "The book thief"
Star rating for The book thief
Average Rating:
4.6 stars
Description:
When Death has a story to tell, you listen. It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her...