Books for my home library Public

Originally published in 1985, the acclaimed book immediately drew criticism for its fictional (but possible) extension into the future of underlying religiosity and patriarchy in American society. The most cited reason for bans is that the book was anti-fundamentalist Christian.

The Giver’s social critique has resulted in controversy and multiple attempts to ban it from schools. Lowry includes mentions of sex, infanticide, suicide, starvation, and euthanasia in order to show the power of the book’s main themes of suffering and individuality.

In 2020, the most challenged book was “George” by Alex Gino. This 2015 novel about the life of a transgender fourth grader, has been “challenged, banned, and restricted for LGBTQIA+ content, conflicting with a religious viewpoint, and not reflecting ‘the values of our community'".

'We' was banned by the Soviets, but smuggled to Prague, creating a controversy in the USSR. Zamyatin, was blacklisted from publishing in his native country. In 1931, Zamyatin was exiled to Paris and died in poverty.

The book was known as a "cursed novel" in Russian circles for decades. In 1929, his writing was banned completely, although he continued to work on The Master and Margarita for another 10 years. Bulgakov wrote personally to Stalin asking to be sent abroad, but Stalin denied the request.

This classic fictional novel has been banned and challenged in the US and around the world for the usual reasons: profanity, naughty words, racial slurs, and stereotypes. It was condemned for supposedly promoting euthanasia, being anti-business, with Steinbeck’s patriotism even being questioned.

The main fault of Robinson Crusoe is the idea that one man can carry out so many heroic acts. In the views of the Soviet government, history is made by a collective effort, not by the acts of separate people.

Was censored due to it being socially corrupting to the youth of China during the Cultural Revolution.

"The storyline is extremely unconventional, bizarre and downright sickening, but at the same time, the words written by Vladimir Nabokov are rendered in the most beautiful and elegant arrangement that I have ever read." - Tampa Bay Times

Solzhenitsyn’s famous accounts of Soviet labour camps are not just works of fiction, but novels based on his own experience. He was expelled from the Union of Writers and was not able to receive his Noble Prize for Literature in 1970. Soon after, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union.

Prohibited by Nazi Germany for featuring Jewish characters.

Although many books found themselves in the Nazi book-burning bonfires of 1933, none were as critical of wartime Germany as this one. Seen as unpatriotic by the National Socialists, what they disliked about it is what makes it so compelling.

Was banned in the province of Hunan, China, beginning in 1931 for its portrayal of anthropomorphized animals acting on the same level of complexity as human beings.

The Catcher in the Rye has the fascinating double distinction of being both the most banned and the second most taught book in American schools. Censors failed to realize that banning a book due to its depiction of teenage rebellion is just going to make rebellious teenagers seek it out even more.

“The Color Purple” by Alice Walker has been banned in schools all over the country since 1984, due to its graphic sexual content and situations of violence and abuse. While “The Color Purple” contains a lot of controversial content, it’s necessary to the story and is what makes the book so real.