Banned Books

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

Showing 1 - 8 of 8  There are a total of 381 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Shout"
Star rating for Shout
Description:
Laurie Halse Anderson is known for the unflinching way she writes about, and advocates for, survivors of sexual assault. Now, inspired by her fans and enraged by how little in our culture has changed since her groundbreaking novel Speak was first published twenty years ago, she has written a poetry memoir that is as vulnerable as it is rallying, as timely as it is timeless. In free verse, Anderson shares reflections, rants, and calls to action woven...
Book cover for "Bronx masquerade"
Star rating for Bronx masquerade
Description:
While studying the Harlem Renaissance, students at a Bronx high school read aloud poems they've written, revealing their innermost thoughts and fears to their formerly clueless classmates.
Book cover for "Ordinary hazards"
Star rating for Ordinary hazards
Description:
"Growing up with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and a mostly absent father, Nikki Grimes found herself terrorized by babysitters, shunted from foster family to foster family, and preyed upon by those she trusted. At the age of six, she poured her pain onto a piece of paper late one night - and discovered the magic and impact of writing. For many years, Nikki's notebooks were her most enduing companions. In this accessible and inspiring...
Book cover for "The Odyssey"
Star rating for The Odyssey
Author:
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
Odysseus--soldier, sailor, trickster, and everyman--is one of the most recognizable characters in world literature. His arduous, ten-year journey home after the Trojan War, the subject of Homer's Odyssey, is the most accessible tale to survive from ancient Greece, and its impact is still felt today across many different cultures. This lively free verse translation, from one of today's leading Homeric scholars, preserves the clarity and simplicity...
Book cover for "Milk and honey"
Star rating for Milk and honey
Author:
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
Milk and honey is a collection of poetry and prose about survival. About the experience of violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity. The book is divided into four chapters, and each chapter serves a different purpose. Deals with a different pain. Heals a different heartache. Milk and honey takes readers through a journey of the most bitter moments in life and finds sweetness in them because there is sweetness everywhere if you are just willing...
Book cover for "Dumpty"
Star rating for Dumpty
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
John Lithgow wields a whip-smart, satirical pen in this poetic diatribe chronicling the last few abysmal years in politics. With lacerating wit, he takes readers verse by verse through the history of Donald Trump's presidency, lampooning the likes of Betsy DeVos, Anthony Scaramucci, Scott Pruitt, Paul Manafort, Trump's doctors, and many others. Illustrated from cover to cover with Lithgow's never-before-seen line drawings, the poems draw inspiration...
Book cover for "Brown girl dreaming"
Star rating for Brown girl dreaming
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement.
Book cover for "Living nations, living words"
Star rating for Living nations, living words
Description:
A powerful, moving anthology that celebrates the breadth of Native poets writing today. Joy Harjo, the first Native poet to serve as U.S. Poet Laureate, has championed the voices of Native peoples past and present. Her signature laureate project gathers the work of contemporary Native poets into a national, fully digital map of story, sound, and space, celebrating their vital and unequivocal contributions to American poetry. This companion anthology...