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Banned Books Week 2022: Digital Resources

Censorship is a dead end. Find your freedom to read during Banned Books Week, Sept. 18 - 24

Banned Books Week: Digital Collection

Visit our Digital Collection for Banned Books Week OR click on the e-books in the slideshow below!

E-books

black cover white the author's name in blue highlight; picture of a green toy indian and soldier.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Banned or Challenged for profanity, sexual references, and allegations of sexual misconduct by the author.

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. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by Ellen Forney that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live. 

Red background with black ink drawing of a dragon; book title is in yellow letter

A Court of Thorns and Roses

Challenged for violence and inappropriate for young teens.

The sexy, action-packed first book in the #1 New York Times bestselling Court of Thorns and Roses series from Sarah J. Maas.When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a terrifying creature arrives to demand retribution. Dragged to a treacherous magical land she knows about only from legends, Feyre discovers that her captor is not truly a beast, but one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled her world. At least, he's not a beast all the time. As she adapts to her new home, her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie she's been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But something is not right in the faerie lands. An ancient, wicked shadow is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it, or doom Tamlin-and his world-forever.From bestselling author Sarah J. Maas comes a seductive, breathtaking book that blends romance, adventure, and faerie lore into an unforgettable read.

White half shredded sheet of paper with the book tile in red and black lettering on the top.

Censored

In twenty-five chapters focusing on a wide range of texts, including the Bible, slave narratives, modernist classics, comic books, and Chicana/o literature, Matthew Fellion and Katherine Inglis chart the forces that have driven censorship in the United Kingdom and the United States for over six hundred years, from fears of civil unrest and corruptible youth to the oppression of various groups - religious and political dissidents, same-sex lovers, the working class, immigrants, women, racialized people, and those who have been incarcerated or enslaved. 

faded memo with words crossed out in black; title of the book listed above it

Critical Insights

Censored & Banned Literature examines the wide range of important literary texts that have been subjected to censorship, either at the time of their first publication, later in their history, or both. Because important works frequently offer challenging responses to social, historical, and political issues, often it is the very best works that provoke - at least initially - the most hostility or discomfort.

Cartoon drawing of a handmaiden wearing a white scarf aganist a dark red background

The Handmaid's Tale

Banned or Challenged for profanity and for "vulgarity and sexual overtones".

Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States and is now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the repressive intolerance of the original Puritans. The regime takes the Book of Genesis absolutely at its word, with bizarre consequences for the women and men in its population.

Upside down dog with the title of the book above it.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Banned or Challenged for religious references and profanity.

Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. Although gifted with a superbly logical brain, Christopher is autistic. Everyday interactions and admonishments have little meaning for him. Routine, order and predictability shelter him from the messy, wider world. Then, at fifteen, Christopher’s carefully constructed world falls apart when he finds his neighbor’s dog, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork, and he is initially blamed for the killing. 

Cartoon drawing of a sliver platter with the title printed on a card.

Fun Home

Banned or Challenged for violence and other (graphic) images.

Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter's complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned "fun home," as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescense, the denouement is swift, graphic -- and redemptive.

Black and white photo are burnt pages of a book.

Libros en Llamas - Historia de la Interminable Destrucción de Bibliotecas

Esta obra revisa la aterradora y frecuente pr ctica de la destrucci n de libros, en ocasiones como consecuencia de una invasi n o venganza, en otras como resultado de un accidente, en algunas m s como un s mbolo, pues muchas hogueras de libros en realidad buscaban aniquilar a sus autores. Dejando de lado la indignaci n que el tema provoca, aunque sin escatimar calificativos cargados de iron a, el autor recorre diversas geograf as y pocas - desde los dep sitos de arcilla con escritura cuneiforme hasta el saqueo en Bagdad ocupada por el ej rcito de Estados Unidos - Para enfrentarnos con la nefasta vocaci n de los hombres que pretenden silenciar las obras que hablan con sus lectores desde el papel.

Color drawing of an older man looking down.

The Bible: Authorized King James Version

Challenged for religious viewpoint and separation of church and state.

This unique edition of the most important book in the history of Western civilization offers an exciting new approach to the most influential of all English biblical texts - the Authorized King James Version, complete with the Apocrypha. Its wide-ranging introduction and notes draw on the most up-to-date scholarship to show how and why the Bible has affected the literature, art, and general culture of the English-speaking world.

Picture of smoke from a just blown out can; title of the book at the bottom.

Looking for Alaska

Challenged for offensive language; considered sexually explicit and unsuited for age group.

Miles "Pudge" Halter is abandoning his safe-okay, boring-life. Fascinated by the last words of famous people, Pudge leaves for boarding school to seek what a dying Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps." Pudge becomes encircled by friends whose lives are everything but safe and boring. Their nucleus is razor-sharp, sexy, and self-destructive Alaska, who has perfected the arts of pranking and evading school rules. Pudge falls impossibly in love. When tragedy strikes the close-knit group, it is only in coming face-to-face with death that Pudge discovers the value of living and loving unconditionally.            

One comedy and one tragedy masks each with a word book speaking part of the book title.

Make Something Up

Challenged for being "disgusting and all around offensive"; sexually explicit and the use of profanity.

Stories you'll never forget--just try--from literature's favorite transgressive author. Representing work that spans several years, Make Something Up is a compilation of 21 stories and one novella (some previously published, some not) that will disturb and delight.

Two teenage boys and a teenage girl stand against a lime green brick wall.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Challenged or Banned for offensive language, homosexuality, drugs/alcohol/smoking as well as being unsuited for age group.

The critically acclaimed debut novel from Stephen Chbosky, Perks follows observant "wallflower" Charlie as he charts a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, and new friends. Sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Devastating loss, young love, and life on the fringes. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie must learn to navigate those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up.

Cartoon depcition of a fantasy man and woman story characters.

Saga

Challenged for being anti-family, nudity, offensive language and sexually offensive.

Winner of the 2013 Hugo award for Best Graphic Story! When two soldiers from opposite sides of a never-ending galactic war fall in love, they risk everything to bring a fragile new life into a dangerous old universe. From New York Times bestselling writer Brian K. Vaughan (Y:The Last Man, Ex Machina) and critically acclaimed artist Fiona Staples (Mystery Society, North 40), Saga is the sweeping tale of one young family fighting to find their place in the worlds. Fantasy and science fiction are wed like never before in this sexy, subversive drama for adults.

Tri section color scheme with a different title of book list in them.

Toni Morrison essential novels The bluest eye, Song of Solomon, Beloved

These books were challenged because they contain sexually explicit themes, racism and degrading language.

A box set of Toni Morrison's principal works, featuring The Bluest Eye (her first novel), Beloved (Pulitzer Prize winner), and Song of Solomon (National Book Critics Award winner).

Picture of two boys kissing.

Two Boys Kissing

Banned and challenged for homosexuality and condones public displays of affection.

Based on true events--and narrated by a Greek Chorus of the generation of gay men lost to AIDS--Two Boys Kissing follows Harry and Craig, two seventeen-year-olds who are about to take part in a 32-hour marathon of kissing to set a new Guinness World Record. While the two increasingly dehydrated and sleep-deprived boys are locking lips, they become a focal point in the lives of other teens dealing with universal questions of love, identity, and belonging.