Each year, FSU Libraries observes Banned Books Week: an annual event celebrating intellectual freedom and open access to information.
According to the American Library Association (ALA), in 2023, 4,2401 different books were targeted through either a ban2 and/or challenge. Public and school libraries saw a 92% increase from 2022 in censorship attempts. Of all the books targeted, 47% represented the lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals.
Reading and considering new ideas are fundamental for thinking critically about the world around us. Libraries play a crucial role in ensuring everyone has access to valuable resources—the ones that lead to meaningful conversations, new friendships, and innovative research. This Banned Books Week, celebrate your freedom to read with FSU Libraries!
The list below contains 20 books that have been repeatedly banned and/or challenged in the United States3. Titles range from recent releases like Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer (2019) to modern classics such as The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (1970). All books are accessible through FSU Libraries, either online or in one of our libraries.
For even more banned and challenged books available to read, visit our display in Strozier Library by the Scholar Support Desk!
by Alex Gino
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. (Previously published as George in 2015).
Challenged, banned, restricted, and hidden because it includes a transgender child, was claimed to be sexually explicit, and conflicted with a religious viewpoint and “traditional family structure.”
Available at Dirac Science Library, PZ7.1.G576 Mel 2022
TIP: you can request to pick up books at Strozier, Dirac, Salley Hall, and other locations! Click here to learn more about requesting materials.
by Mike Curato
It’s the summer between middle school and high school, and Aiden Navarro is away at camp. Everyone’s going through changes–but for Aiden, the stakes feel higher.
Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content, and because it was claimed to be sexually explicit.
Available at Dirac Science Library, PZ7.7.C876 Fl 2020
by Maia Kobabe
In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity.
Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content, and because it was claimed to be sexually explicit.
Available online as an eBook via lib.fsu.edu
Something Happened in Our Town: A Child’s Story About Racial Injustice (2018)
by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins, and Ann Hazzard, illustrated by Jennifer Zivoin
After discussing the police shooting of a local Black man with their families, Emma and Josh know how to treat a new student who looks and speaks differently than his classmates.
Challenged for “divisive language” and because it was claimed to promote anti-police views.
Available at the FSU Law Library, PZ7.1.C4647 S66 2018
by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
When sixteen-year-old Rashad is mistakenly accused of stealing, classmate Quinn witnesses his brutal beating at the hands of a police officer who happens to be the older brother of his best friend. Told through Rashad and Quinn’s alternating viewpoints.
Banned and challenged for profanity, drug use, alcoholism, and because it was claimed to promote anti-police views, contain divisive topics, and be “too much of a sensitive matter right now.”
Available at Dirac Science Library, PZ7.R33593 Al 2015
by Ashley Hope Perez
Out of Darkness is a work of historical young adult fiction, loosely based on an actual school explosion that took place in New London, Texas, in 1937. It’s a gripping novel about race, segregation, love, and the forces that destroy people.
Banned, challenged, and restricted for depictions of abuse and because it was claimed to be sexually explicit.
Available at Dirac Science Library, PZ7.P4255 Ou 2015
Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out (2014)
by Susan Kuklin
Author and photographer Susan Kuklin met and interviewed six transgender or gender-neutral young adults. Portraits, family photographs, and candid images grace the pages, augmenting the emotional and physical journey each youth has taken.
Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and because it was claimed to be sexually explicit.
Available at Dirac Science Library, HQ77.9 .K85 2014
by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings, illustrated by Shelagh McNichols
From the time she was two years old, Jazz knew that she had a girl’s brain in a boy’s body. She loved pink and dressing up as a mermaid and didn’t feel like herself in boys’ clothing. This confused her family, until they took her to a doctor who said that Jazz was transgender and that she was born that way.
Challenged and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content, for a transgender character, and for confronting a topic that is “sensitive, controversial, and politically charged.”
Available at Dirac Science Library, HQ77.7 .H467 2014
by Mariko Tamaki, illustrated by Jillian Tamaki
Rose and her parents have been going to Awago Beach since she was a little girl. It’s her summer getaway, her refuge. Her friend Windy is always there, too, like the little sister she never had. But this summer is different. Rose’s mom and dad won’t stop fighting, and Rose and Windy have gotten tangled up in a tragedy-in-the-making in the small town of Awago Beach. It’s a summer of secrets and heartache, and it’s a good thing Rose and Windy have each other.
Banned and challenged for profanity, sexual references, and certain illustrations.
Available at Dirac Science Library, PN6727.T246 T45 2014
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2013)
by Jesse Andrews
Greg Gaines is the last master of high school espionage, able to disappear at will into any social environment. He has only one friend, Earl, and together they spend their time making movies. Until Greg’s mother forces him to rekindle his childhood friendship with Rachel. Rachel has been diagnosed with leukemia — cue extreme adolescent awkwardness — but a parental mandate has been issued and must be obeyed
Banned and challenged for profanity and because it was claimed to be sexually explicit and degrading to women.
Available online as an eBook via lib.fsu.edu
Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan (2009)
by Jeanette Winter
Based on a true story. After her parents are taken away by the Taliban, young Nasreen stops speaking. But as she spends time in a secret school, she slowly breaks out of her shell.
Banned and challenged for containing a religious viewpoint, depicting violence, and because it was claimed to be unsuited to its age group.
Available at Dirac Science Library, LC2410.A3 W56 2009
by Patricia McCormick
Thirteen-year-old Lakshmi leaves her poor mountain home in Nepal thinking that she is to work in the city as a maid only to find that she has been sold into the sex slave trade in India and that there is no hope of escape.
Challenged for depictions of sexual assault and because it was claimed to be sexually explicit.
Available at Dirac Science Library, PS3613.C3827 S65 2006
by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, illustrated by Henry Cole
Two Penguins fall in love and start a family by taking turns sitting on an abandoned egg until it hatches.
Banned and challenge for LGBTQIA+ content (promoting “the homosexual agenda”), had a religious and political viewpoint, and because it was claimed to be anti-family and unsuited for its age group.
Available at Dirac Science Library, PZ10.3.R414 Tan 2005
by John Green
Sixteen-year-old Miles’ first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal car crash.
Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and because it was claimed to be sexually explicit.
Available at Dirac Science Library, PZ7.G8233 Lo 2007
by Ellen Hopkins
Kristina Georgia Snow is the perfect daughter, gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. But on a trip to visit her absentee father, Kristina disappears and Bree takes her place. Bree is the exact opposite of Kristina. Through a boy, Bree meets the monster: crank. And what begins as a wild ecstatic ride turns into a struggle through hell for her mind, her soul – her life.
Banned and challenged for depictions of drug use and because it was claimed to be sexually explicit.
Available online as an eBook via lib.fsu.edu
by Laurie Halse Anderson
A traumatic event near the end of the summer has a devastating effect on Melinda’s freshman year in high school.
Banned, challenged, and restricted because it was thought to contain a political viewpoint and it was claimed to be biased against male students, and for the novel’s inclusion of sexual assault and profanity.
Available at Dirac Science Library, PZ7.A54385 Sp 1999
The Adventures of Captain Underpants (1997)
by Dav Pilkey
When George and Harold hypnotize their principal into thinking that he is the superhero Captain Underpants, he leads them to the lair of the nefarious Dr. Diaper, where they must defeat his evil robot henchmen.
The entire series was challenged for containing offensive language, violence, a same-sex couple, and because it was claimed to be unsuited to its age group.
Available at Dirac Science Library, PZ7.P63123 Ad 1997
It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health (1994)
by Robie H. Harris, illustrated by Michael Emberley
Provides accurate, lucid, and unbiased answers to almost every conceivable question on sex, including birth control and AIDS, that children may ask. Two cartoon characters, a bird and a bee have, often humorous, questions of their own.
Challenged for nudity, sex education, and because it was claimed to be sexually explicit and unsuited to its age group.
Available at Dirac Science Library, HQ53 .H37 2009
by Toni Morrison
Eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove, an African-American girl in an America whose love for blonde, blue-eyed children can devastate all others, prays for her eyes to turn blue, so that she will be beautiful, people will notice her, and her world will be different.
The Bluest Eye was banned and challenged because it depicts child sexual abuse, contains EDI content, and was claimed to be sexually explicit.
Available online as an eBook via lib.fsu.edu
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)
by Maya Angelou
The first of seven autobiographical works, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is Angelou’s most famous and critically acclaimed book. The story spans much of her childhood, following young Maya and her older brother as they bounce from their parents’ home to their grandmother’s and back again. Throughout the memoir, Angelou struggles not only with feelings of chronic displacement but also her experiences with racism, molestation and rape. A revolutionary account of what it meant to be young, female and black in America.
Banned and challenged because it was claimed to be sexually explicit.
Available at Dirac Science Library, PS3551.N464 Z466 1969
- Book Ban Data sourced from ALA’s recent report. ↩︎
- According to the ALA, a challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict access to materials or services based upon the objections of a person or group. A book is banned when it is entirely removed from a collection in response to a formal or informal challenge. ↩︎
- Book resumes courtesy of Unite Against Book Bans. Explanations for each ban or challenge provided by the American Library Association. Book cover images sourced from Amazon. ↩︎
This post was written by Alaina Faulkner, Student Engagement Associate at FSU Libraries.
