Banned Books?

There, where one burn books, one in the end burns men. ~ Heinrich Heine

Map of Censored Books

Be sure to click on the tabs for individual explanations of each banning.

This map is absolutely FASCINATING to me. By fascinating, I mean - ridiculous. If the child can read it, let them. If they don't comprehend it, or understand it, discuss it with them!

Each year, the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom records hundreds of attempts by individuals and groups to have books removed from libraries shelves and from classrooms. At least 42 of the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century have been the target of ban attempts.



Here are some of the books on the list that I have read, and when:

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgeral -- Jr High
2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger -- High School
3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck -- High School
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee -- Jr High
5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker -- Jr High
6. Ulysses by James Joyce -- High School
7. Beloved by Toni Morrison -- High School
8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding -- Elementary School
9. 1984 by George Orwell -- Jr High
10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov -- College, or Later
12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck -- High School
13. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White -- Elementary School
14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce -- College, or Later
15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller -- High School
16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley -- High School
17. Animal Farm by George Orwell -- Elementary School
18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner -- High School
20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway -- College, or Later
21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne -- Elementary School
23. Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell -- Jr High
27. Native Son by Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey -- Jr High
29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut -- Jr High
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway -- High School
31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac -- Jr High
32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway -- Jr High
33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London -- High School
34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James -- College, or Later
36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
37. The World According to Garp by John Irving
38. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
39. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
40. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien -- Elementary School
41. Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally
42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand -- Jr High
44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum -- Jr High
48. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess -- High School
50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
51. My Antonia by Willa Cather
52. Howards End by E. M. Forster
53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
56. Jazz by Toni Morrison
57. Sophie's Choice by William Styron
58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
59. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald -- High School
63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
64. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
66. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
68. Light in August by William Faulkner
69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
71. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier -- College, or Later
72. A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams -- College, or Later
73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs -- College, or Later
74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway -- College, or Later
78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett -- College, or Later
80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
82. White Noise by Don DeLillo
83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
85. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells -- College, or Later
86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
87. The Bostonians by Henry James
88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
93. The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
95. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster
99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
100. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

How many have you read?

I'm sure I've read more; and, even out of the list above, I chose to read many of the books on my own. Some of the books I read in elementary school on my own were later given as assignments in junior high or high school. And some of the books I read in college were never assigned ... which leads me to wonder if they were banned, challenged or simply never even attempted to be assigned? The map points out - 70 to 80% of banned or challenged books are never even reported! Yes, I put an exclamation on that - we're approaching the second decade of the twenty-first century and people still want to hide words on a page!!!! With "reality" tv (complete with scripts), and just about everything else exposed on tv ... and people are afraid of some words on a page?

Two words: grow up.