Banned Books Week: What books are challenged and Why?

The books on the challenged/banned list run the gamut.

It's anything from And Tango Makes Three to In the Night Kitchen, both children's picture books to children's chapter books like Captain Underpants to Bridge to Terabithia to Julie of the Wolves to young adult novels like Sandpiper, ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r,  The Hunger Games to classics like The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, Lord of the Flies, 1984, Huckleberry Finn, Fahrenheit 451 to popular fiction like Harry Potter and Twilight. Several books by Stephen King and Judy Blume have been banned/challenged in years past.

Generally when people are asked to name their favorite book, To Kill a Mockingbird is somewhere on that list. And yep it's been challenged/banned as well.

ALA took a list of the Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century and counted off how many book on that list had been challenged/banned. These are just ones they know about but 45/100 books have been challenged and yet are considered the top novels of the 20th century.

Why do people challenge books?

The most common reasons books were challenged from 2001 to 2010
- “sexually explicit”
- “offensive language”
- “unsuited to age group”
- “violence”
- “homosexuality”
- "anti-family”
- "religious viewpoints"

I know Harry Potter has been challenged due to promotion of witchcraft.

Mechele Armstrong