What BANNED Book Have You Read?

The Secret Garden

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

When orphaned Mary Lennox comes to live at her uncle's great house on the Yorkshire Moors, she finds it full of secrets. The mansion has nearly one hundred rooms, and her uncle keeps himself locked up. And at night, she hears the sound of crying down one of the long corridors. The gardens surrounding the large property are Mary's only escape. Then, Mary discovers a secret garden, surrounded by walls and locked with a missing key. With the help of two unexpected companions, Mary discovers a way in—and becomes determined to bring the garden back to life.

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Banned for racist language and depictions

Phantom Tollbooth

by Norton Juster

For Milo, everything’s a bore. When a tollbooth mysteriously appears in his room, he drives through only because he’s got nothing better to do. But on the other side, things seem different. Milo visits the Island of Conclusions (you get there by jumping), learns about time from a ticking watchdog named Tock, and even embarks on a quest to rescue Rhyme and Reason. Somewhere along the way, Milo realizes something astonishing. Life is far from dull. In fact, it’s exciting beyond his wildest dreams!

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A librarian from Boulder, Colorado once locked this book away from her public library after declaring it “poor fantasy”

Johnny Got His Gun

by Dalton Trumbo

This was no ordinary war. This was a war to make the world safe for democracy. And if democracy was made safe, then nothing else mattered—not the millions of dead bodies, nor the thousands of ruined lives. . . . This is no ordinary novel. This is a novel that never takes the easy way out: it is shocking, violent, terrifying, horrible, uncompromising, brutal, remorseless and gruesome. . . but so is war.

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Trumbo's 1939 anti-war novel, Johnny Got His Gun, won a National Book Award. This book was first published two days after World War II began. Although it was not specifically banned, the author and publisher voluntarily agreed to stop reprints until after the war ended. However, the author was blacklisted in Hollywood in 1950. 

Little Black Sambo

by Helen Bannerman

Little Black Sambo was written and illustrated by Scottish author Helen Bannerman in October 1899, The Story of Little Black Sambo tells the tale of a little boy who lost his red coat and his blue trousers and his purple shoes but who was saved from the tigers to eat 169 pancakes for his supper.

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Banned for being "inappropriate" and "not in keeping with good human relations," the "inherent racism of the book, because it "distorts a child's view of black people," and being "racially derogatory."

Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian

by Sherman Alexie

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

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Consistently challenged since its publication in 2007 for acknowledging issues such as poverty, alcoholism, and sexuality, this National Book Award winner was challenged in school curriculums because of profanity and situations that were deemed sexually explicit.

To Kill A Mockingbird

by Harper Lee

Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.

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This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, considered an American classic, was challenged and banned because of violence and its use of the N-word.