Challenged Books List
This list is in no way comprehensive, but I am always working on it. For more complete lists, please use these links:
- 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books: 1990 – 1999
- Banned and Challenged Classics
- There are some great PDF files available as a free download from the American Library Association. Here is the link to where they are located. You will have to scroll to the bottom.
- Dangerous Books Blog by Lanis Wilson of Durham Academy
Book in bold are ones I have read. Books I have reviewed, will be linked. To see other bloggers reviews, please see this page.
Anti-Religious or Occult Themes
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
- Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
- Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
- His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman
- The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
- The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
- Scary Stories series by Alvin Schwartz
- East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Gay-Positive Theme, Homosexuality
- Baby Be-Bop by Fracesca Lia Block
- My Father’s Scar by Michael Cart
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
- Am I Blue? by Bruce Coville
- In the Time I Get by Chris Crutcher
- Eight Seconds by Jean Ferris
- The Sissy Duckling by Harvey Fierstein
- The Bermudez Trangle by Maureen Johnson
- Brokeback Mountain by E. Annie Proulx
- And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell & Justin Richardson
Political
- Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
- 1984 by George Orwell
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
- Candide by Voltaire
Profanity (may include Racial Slurs)
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
- Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher
- Ordinary People by Judith Guest
- A Raisin In the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
- The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
- All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
- The Adventures of HuckleberryFinn by Mark Twain
- Black Boy by Richard Wright
Sexual Content (may include Rape, Incest, Masturbation)
- The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
- Paula by Isabel Allende
- Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
- Flowers In The Attic by V.C. Andrews
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
- Deenie by Judy Blume
- Forever by Judy Blume
- The Awakening by Kate Chopin
- Fanny Hill by John Cleland
- Krik! Krak! by Edwidge Danticat
- Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
- Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
- Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
- Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- Ulysses by James Joyce
- Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
- Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
- Love In the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- Rabbit, Run by John Updike
- Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Sexual Content, Anti-Religious
- The Handmaids’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Sexual Content, Strong Language/Profanity/Racial Slurs
- Bless me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
- How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alarez
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
- Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
- Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin
- Red Sky At Morning by Richard Bradford
- Forever by Judy Blume
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
- Chinese Handcuffs by Chris Crutcher
- Stotan by Chris Crutcher
- As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Howl by Alan Ginsberg
- Looking for Alaska by John Green
- Olive’s Ocean by Kevin Henkes
- A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
- Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver
- To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
- Catcher In the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- Gossip Girls series by Cecily von Ziegesar
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Violence, Language
- In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
- Beach Music by Pat Conroy
- My Losing Season by Pat Conroy
- The Great Santini by Pat Conroy
- The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
- The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy
- James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
- The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- Snow Falling On Cedars by David Guterson
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
- Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon
- Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
- Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Violence, Sexual Content
- Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
- Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy
- The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
- We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
- Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
- The Giver by Lois Lowry (incl subjects of euthanasia & suicide)
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff
- Native Son by Richard Wright




