How to Use the Library

Always Running: La Vida Loco, Gang Days in LA

by Luis J. Rodriguez (1993)

Removed from Santa Barbara, CA reading lists in 2004; #68 on the ALA's 100 Most Challenged Books List, 2000–2009

The House of the Spirits

by Isabel Allende (1982)

Removed from classrooms in Orange County, FL in 2023; #71 on the ALA’s 100 Most Challenged Books list, 2010–2019

Dreaming in Cuban

by Cristina Garcia (1992)

#65 on the ALA's 100 Most Challenged Books List, 2010–2019

The House on Mango Street

by Sandra Cisneros (1984)

Removed from Tuscon, AZ classrooms by H.B. 2811, which dismantled programs in Mexican-American cultural studies; restored in 2017

Bless Me, Ultima

by Rudolfo Anaya (1972)

#63 on the ALA's 100 Most Challenged Books List, 2010–2019

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

by Julia Alvarez (1992)

Removed from high school curriculum in 2024 in Tillamook, OR

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

by Paulo Friere (1968)

Removed from Tuscon, AZ classrooms by H.B. 2811, which dismantled programs in Mexican-American cultural studies; restored in 2017

One Hundred Years of Solitude

by Gabriel García Márquez (1967)

Called "garbage being passed off as literature" and removed from required reading lists by school officials in 1986 in Wasco, CA

Of Mice and Men

by John Steinbeck (1937)

#5 on the ALA's 100 Most Challenged Books list, 2000–2009; #28 on the 100 Most Challenged Books list, 2010–2019

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain (1885)

One of the first novels banned in the United States when librarians in Concord, MA called it “suitable only for the slums” months after its publication

The Catcher in the Rye

by J.D. Salinger (1951)

First removed from a classroom in Oklahoma in 1960 for profanity and references to sex; #19 on the ALA's 100 Most Challenged Books List, 2000–2009; #49 on the 100 Most Challenged Books list, 2010–2019

Lord of the Flies

by William Golding (1954)

Challenged in 1981 in Owen, NC for being “demoralizing, in that it implies that man is little more than an animal”

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Challenged in 1986 in Aberdeen, WA for promoting secular humanism; #49 on the ALA’s 100 Most Challenged Books list, 2000–2009

1984

by George Orwell (1949)

First challenged in 1981 in Jackson County, FL for “pro-communist” themes; #79 on the ALA’s 100 Most Challenged Books list, 2010–2019

The Great Gatsby

by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

Removed from high school curriculum in 2020 in Alaska for “language and sexual references”