Freedom to Read Week

A collection of some of the most challenged/banned books, all available at our libraries!

Books come from lists created by the American Librarian Association, PEN America, and the Freedom to Read Week organization.

Updated February 24, 2026
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All boys aren't blue : a memoir-manifesto
Johnson, George M.
Paper Book
This powerful YA memoir-manifesto follows journalist and LGBTQ+ activist George M. Johnson as they explore their childhood, adolescence, and college years, growing up under the duality of being black and queer. From memories of getting their teeth kicked out by bullies at age five to their loving...
Gender queer
Kobabe, Maia.
Paper Book
2020 ALA Alex Award Winner 2020 Stonewall -- Israel Fishman Non-fiction Award Honor Book 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. At the time, it was...
This book is gay
Dawson, Juno (Young adult fiction writer)
Paper Book
A funny and pertinent book about being lesbian, bisexual, gay, queer, transgender or just curious - for everybody, no matter their gender or sexuality
This one summer
Tamaki, Mariko
Paper Book
A New York Times bestseller A 2015 Caldecott Honor Book A 2015 Michael L. Printz Honor Book An Eisner Award Winner Rose is always excited for summer. It means the lake house with her parents, but most importantly, it means she gets to spend the summer with...
Habibi
Thompson, Craig
Paper Book
Habibi, based on a Middle Eastern fable, tells the story of Dodola, who escapes being sold into slavery and rescues an abandoned baby she names Zam. They live in isolation in an old boat in the desert. As they age their relationship shifts from mother and son, to brother and sister and...
Hunger Games Deluxe
Collins Suzanne
Paper Book
  With beautiful artwork by Freya Betts, this paperback edition features gorgeous sprayed edges with stencilled artwork. This is a breathtaking collectible perfect for the long-time fan or new Hunger Games reader. The first book in the ground-breaking Hunger Gamestrilogy. ...
The graveyard book
Gaiman, Neil
Paper Book
The original hardcover edition of a perennial favorite, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, which has sold more than one million copies and is the only novel to win both the Newbery Medal and the Carnegie Medal.  Bod is an unusual boy who inhabits an unusual place--he's the only living...
Fun home : a family tragicomic
Bechdel, Alison
Paper Book
DISCOVER the BESTSELLING GRAPHIC MEMOIR behind the Olivier Award nominated musical. 'A sapphic graphic treat' The Times A moving and darkly humorous family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Alison Bechdel's gothic...
Extremely loud & incredibly close
Foer, Jonathan Safran
Paper Book
Nine-year-old Oskar Blum is an inventor, amateur entomologist, Francophile, letter writer, pacifist, natural historian, percussionist, romantic, Great Explorer, jeweller, detective, vegan, and collector of butterflies, Beatles memorabilia, state quarters, miniature cacti and coral. When his father...
The kite runner
Hosseini, Khaled
Paper Book
Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the approval of his father and resolves to win the local kite-fighting tournament, to prove that he has the makings of a man. His loyal friend Hassan promises to help him - for he always helps Amir - but this is 1970s Afghanistan and Hassan is merely a low...
Persepolis
Satrapi, Marjane
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Wise, funny, and heartbreaking, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's acclaimed graphic memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. "A wholly original achievement.... Satrapi evokes herself and her schoolmates coming of age in a...
Blankets
Thompson, Craig
Paper Book
Named one of Time's top 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time! "...A rarity: a first-love story so well remembered and honest that it reminds you what falling in love feels like. ...achingly beautiful." - Time magazine Wrapped in the landscape of a blustery Wisconsin...
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Haddon, Mark
Paper Book
OVER TEN MILLION COPIES SOLD The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's Syndrome. He knows a very great deal about...
The golden compass
Pullman, Philip
Paper Book
Lyra Belacqua and her animal daemon live half-wild and carefree among scholars of Jordan College, Oxford. The destiny that awaits her will take her to the frozen lands of the Arctic, where witch-clans reign and ice-bears fight. Her extraordinary journey will have immeasurable consequences far beyond...
I know why the caged bird sings
Angelou, Maya
Paper Book
A phenomenal #1 bestseller that has appeared on theNew York Timesbestseller list for nearly three years, this memoir traces Maya Angelou's childhood in a small, rural community during the 1930s. Filled with images and recollections that point to the dignity and courage of black men and women,...
The Diary of Anne Frank
Frank, Anne
Paper Book
Journal of a Jewish teenager describes the joys and torments of daily life and typical adolescent thoughts throughout two years spent in hiding with her family during the Nazi occupation of Holland.
Bone : out from Boneville
Smith, Jeff
Paper Book
Jeff Smith's New York Times and USA Today bestselling, award-winning BONE books are one of the most popular graphic novel series of all time. Read the first book in this thrilling adventure! After being run out of Boneville, the three Bone cousins -- Fone Bone, Phoney Bone, and...
The handmaid's tale
Atwood, Margaret Eleanor
Paper Book
** THE SUNDAY TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER ** Go back to where it all began with the dystopian novel behind the award-winning TV series. 'The Handmaid's Tale changed me profoundly, hopefully for the better' Lee Child, Guardian
Maus : a survivor's tale, my father bleeds history
Spiegelman, Art.
Paper Book
The definitive edition of the graphic novel acclaimed as "the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust" (Wall Street Journal) and "the first masterpiece in comic book history" (The New Yorker) * PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * One of Variety's "Banned and...
Of mice and men
Steinbeck, John
Paper Book
Novel-Ties study guides contain reproducible pages in a chapter by chapter format to accompany a work of literature of the same title.
The house of the spirits
Allende, Isabel
Paper Book
Spanning four generations, Isabel Allende's magnificent family saga is populated by a memorable, often eccentric cast of characters. Together, men and women, spirits, the forces of nature, and of history, converge in an unforgettable, wholly absorbing and brilliantly realised novel that is as richly...
Brave new world
Huxley, Aldous.
Paper Book
Welcome to New London. Everybody is happy here. Our perfect society achieves peace and stability by dispensing with monogamy, privacy, money, family and history itself. Now everyone belongs. You can be happy too. All you need to do is take your Soma pills.This is the...
The color purple
Walker, Alice
Paper Book
'One of the most haunting books you could ever wish to read¿it is stunning - moving, exciting, and wonderful' Lenny Henry Set in the deep American south between the wars, this is the classic tale of Celie, a young poor black girl. Raped repeatedly by her father, she loses two children and...
Ender's game
Card, Orson Scott
Paper Book
Ender Wiggin is Battle School's latest recruit. His teachers reckon he could become a great leader. And they need one. A vast alien force is headed for Earth, its mission: the annihilation of all human life. Ender could be our only hope. But first he must survive the most brutal military training...
A clockwork orange
Burgess, Anthony
Paper Book
To kill a mockingbird
Lee, Harper
Paper Book
The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made...
Nineteen eighty-four
Orwell, George
Paper Book
One of Britain's most popular novels, George Orwell's dystopian tale Nineteen Eighty-Four is set in a society terrorised by a totalitarian ideology propagated by The Party. 'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.' Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth in...
The catcher in the rye
Salinger, J. D.
Paper Book
It's Christmas and Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from yet another school. Fleeing the crooks at Pencey Prep, he pinballs around New York City seeking solace in fleeting encounters - shooting the bull with strangers in dive hotels, wandering alone round Central Park, getting beaten up by...

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