Banned Books Week

This story about a young boy who likes wearing dresses to school and the challenges he faces trying to be accepted, teaches kids that they don’t have to identify with traditional gender roles and that they should accept the choices other people make and not be bullies. It was banned in a North Carolina School District in 2017 after parents complained that the story “teaches kids to be transgender.”

On his journey with his parents to meet a perfect princess this prince ends up slaying a dragon with a knight and along the way finding the relationship he was looking for. #5 on the ALA’s “Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2019”, this book was removed from shelves for featuring a gay marriage and LGBTQIA+ content that is supposedly a “deliberate attempt to indoctrinate children.” In 2019, a teacher wrote to the newspaper arguing not only to remove this book from the shelves, but saying that it should “never be read to children again.”

This classic book by E.B. White was ranked by PBS as one of America’s top 100 most-loved novels and is the winner of a Newbery Honor. The story teaches kids about friendship, love, and coping with the death of loved ones, making it a wonderful tool to teach kids about social-emotional learning. It was banned in certain school districts in Kansas in 2006 because talking animals were viewed by certain parents as "blasphemous."

This graphic novel features 4 female high school students as they challenge the administration of their school to care about women’s health and provide menstrual products in the bathroom. Heralded as a story of female empowerment, this book was banned in mass with over 40 other books in the Keller school district in Texas in 2022. They refused to give a specific reason for the ban. Some say it was because the girls challenged authority, but it is likely for explicitly talking about reproductive anatomy and the menstrual cycle.

Jordan Banks, the new 7th grader at Riverdale Academy Day School, no longer feels like he fits in anywhere. He is one of the only kids of color in his new school and is struggling to be accepted and feels that he is losing touch with his friends from home. This winner of the Newbery Medal, Coretta Scott King Author Award, Kirkus Prize for Young Readers’ Literature was temporarily pulled off school library shelves in 2021 and 2022 in a school district in Texas after parents complained that the book "teaches critical race theory."

The graphic novel, Persepolis, paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. Marjane’s child’s-eye view of dethroned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution allows us to learn as she does the history of this fascinating country and of her own extraordinary family. Intensely personal, profoundly political, and wholly original, Persepolis is at once a story of growing up and a reminder of the human cost of war and political repression.
Pulled from all Chicago, IL public schools due to “graphic illustrations and language” and concerns about “developmental preparedness” and “student readiness.” Students protested the banning of a book “all about free speech”. They took to their Facebook and Twitter accounts, checked out all library copies of the book, wrote blogs, sent e-mails, wrote investigative articles for the student newspaper, contacted the author, staged protests, and appeared on local radio and television programs. Eventually the school issued a letter telling high school principals to disregard the earlier order to pull the book. A year later the book was challenged in three other states with one parent questioning “why a book about Muslims was assigned on September 11.”

It’s Perfectly Normal has been hailed by parents, educators, psychologists, and doctors for its thorough and scientifically valid information concerning puberty and sexual topics. Providing accurate, unbiased answers to nearly every imaginable question, from conception and puberty to birth control and AIDS, It's Perfectly Normal offers young people the information they need—now more than ever—to make responsible decisions and to stay healthy. Translations available in 21 languages. Frequently challenged and banned since its initial publication in 1998 for “cartoon nudity,” “child pornography,” and “depicting minors having sexual intercourse.”

A comic book for kids that includes children and families of all makeups, orientations, and gender identities; an essential resource about bodies, gender, and sexuality for children ages 8 to 10 as well as their parents and caregivers. Much more than the facts of life' or 'the birds and the bees,' Sex is a Funny Word opens up conversations between young people and their caregivers in a way that allows adults to convey their values and beliefs while providing information about boundaries, safety, and joy.'

Melissa, previously published as George until April 2022. BE WHO YOU ARE. When people look at Melissa, they think they see a boy named George. But she knows she's not a boy. She knows she's a girl. Melissa thinks she'll have to keep this a secret forever. Then her teacher announces that their class play is going to be Charlotte's Web. Melissa really, really, REALLY wants to play Charlotte. But the teacher says she can't even try out for the part... because she's a boy. With the help of her best friend, Kelly, Melissa comes up with a plan. Not just so she can be Charlotte -- but so everyone can know who she is, once and for all.

This YA novel tells the story of high school student Tish Bonner through journal entries assigned throughout the year by her English teacher, Mrs. Dunphrey, and follows her as her life slowly begins to spin out of control through familial and social troubles. The novel discusses parental neglect, sexual harassment at an after-school job, and other young adult stresses. It is on the ALA’s list for Best Books for Young Adults. It was challenged and ultimately banned in Galt Joint Union Elementary School District classrooms in Sacramento, CA and restricted to students with parental permission in the middle school libraries.

It's okay to need some help. It's okay to be a different color. It's okay to talk about your feelings. From the bestselling author Todd Parr comes a reassuring book about being who you are. Told with Todd Parr's signature wit and wisdom, It's Okay to Be Different cleverly delivers the important messages of acceptance, understanding, and confidence in an accessible, child-friendly format. The book features the bold, bright colors and silly scenes that made Todd a premiere voice for emotional discussions in children's literature. Targeted to young children first beginning to read, this book will inspire kids to celebrate their individuality through acceptance of others and self-confidence--and it's never to early to develop a healthy self-esteem. It's Okay to be Different is designed to encourage early literacy, enhance emotional development, celebrate multiculturalism and diversity, and promote character growth.

In a wildly whimsical, validating, and exuberant reflection of the LGBT community, This Day In June welcomes readers to experience a pride celebration and share in a day when we are all united. Also included is a Reading Guide chock-full of facts about LGBT history and culture, as well as a Note to Parents and Caregivers with information on how to talk to children about sexual orientation and gender identity in age-appropriate ways. This Day In June is an excellent tool for teaching respect, acceptance, and understanding of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.

This is the true story of Nasreen, a girl living in Afghanistan under the Taliban, who is enrolled by her grandmother in a secret school for girls where she illegally learns to read. It has been challenged in multiple states by parents for “promoting another religion besides Christianity” since it contains an Islamic prayer, for being “un-American”, and for being too violent for children (despite educational experts saying that this is false).

Emma and Josh heard that something happened in their town. A Black man was shot by the police. "Why did the police shoot that man?" "Can police go to jail?" This story follows two families -- one White, one Black -- as they discuss a police shooting of a Black man in their community. It aims to answer children's questions about such traumatic events, and to help children identify and counter racial injustice in their own lives. It has been challenged for having an "anti-police" message that will "leave children with the impression that they can't trust the police."

Out of Darkness is a Romeo and Juliet story set against the backdrop of an actual historical event: the New London, Texas, school explosion of 1937, which killed more than 300 students and teachers. The doomed teenaged lovers are Naomi, a Mexican girl, and Wash, a Black boy. Both are subject to the racism, prejudices, and rigid segregation of the era. Challengers "banned, challenged, and restricted" the book because of its "depictions of abuse and because it was considered to be sexually explicit."

A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtly and grace. In Morrison's acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove--an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--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. Challenged for “sexually explicit material,” “lots of graphic descriptions and lots of disturbing language,” and “an underlying socialist-communist agenda.”

Anne Frank and her family, fleeing the horrors of Nazi occupation forces, hid in the back of an Amsterdam office building for two years. This is Anne’s record of that time. She was thirteen when the family went into the “Secret Annex,” and in these pages, she grows to be a young woman and proves to be an insightful observer of human nature as well. This edition includes material about Anne’s burgeoning sexuality and confrontations with her mother that were cut from previous editions. It has been challenged as inappropriately graphic and pornographic.

This story is about three generations of Cuban women and their separate responses to the revolution. Cristina García's acclaimed book is the haunting, bittersweet story of a family experiencing a country's revolution and the revelations that follow. The lives of Celia del Pino and her husband, daughters, and grandchildren mirror the magical realism of Cuba itself, a landscape of beauty and poverty, idealism and corruption. It was challenged for sexually explicit or erotic passages.

This is the story of two African American sisters in the early twentieth-century -- Nettie, a missionary in Africa and Celie, a child wife living in rural Georgia -- who sustain their loyalty to and trust in each other across time, distance, and silence. Commonly cited justifications for banning the book include sexual explicitness, explicit language, violence, and homosexuality.