"The Most Frequently Banned Books in the 1990s"
This list is taken from the table of contents of Banned in the U.S.A. by Herbert N. Foerstel. It shows the fifty books that were most frequently challenged in schools and public libraries in the United States between 1990 and 1992. Banned in the U.S.A. has more information about the efforts to keep each title out of schools. (Here's the publisher's information on the book.)

The list is reprinted here with permission from the publisher. Most of the books in this list are still copyrighted, and not available online at this time. Those that are available have hyperlinks to the text. There may also be links to pages with more information about certain authors.

Impressions Edited by Jack Booth et al.
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
The Witches by Roald Dahl
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Blubber by Judy Blume
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
Christine by Stephen King
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Cujo by Stephen King
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
I Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
My House by Nikki Giovanni
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz


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[This message was edited Wed Apr 23 6:03:19 PDT 2003 by IceNine]

I remember US librarians cancelling Rolling Stone subscriptions over the cover of The Red Hot Chili Peppers naked.

And burnings of Harry Potter books becuz it might be Satan worship.

US = sumtimes.

IceNine said:

The above would be in my list of FAVORITE books I read as a child and most of them I read in school, for a class!

What in the hell could possibly be wrong with James and the Giant Peach?? My 2nd grade teacher read it to us!! And we eveb wrote Roald Dahl fan letters for a handwriting lesson!!

The womens officer at my university got the Sun newspaper banned from the union shop because the Page 3 topless woman was considered demeaning to women.

SomewhereInApril said:

We used to get City Pages (a Mpls arts and news weekly) and the Women's Press (a feminist weekly) dropped off at my work each week and they stopped a few years ago cause someone complained about the sex ads in the back of the paper.

I still don't get that. If they were so offended by the ads, what were they doing looking in the back of a free weekly paper anyway!?!

What's pitiful to me is, this is some of this country best writing, a few of these books has even won the nobel peace prize yet it's banned from the public school system :Roll: and they wonder why america education is at the bottom of the list

Heaven forbid that our children should learn to think for themselves! We have to protect them from "harmful" thoughts, which is pretty much anything we don't like!

The right to consume alcohol, drive, vote, buy a gun, get married, etc. doesn't extend to children...why should the right to read whatever you want? We still ban porn, don't we?

Then again, Huck Finn was one of my favorite books as a kid. It's waaay better than Tom Sawyer.

But you have to draw the line somewhere, right?

Flame away!

As a kid, seeing a list like this would only make me want to read the books more. So I say ENCOURAGE CENSORSHIP!!! BAN MORE BOOKS!!! It'll make the kids wanna read that much more!!!

Hell, if and when I ever put out my own novel, I hope to hell it gets banned. You can't buy publicity like that...

I graduated three years ago (was in HS from '96-2000). None of these books were banned from my school, and we read almost half of them.

There's some fine books there!

Education starts at home.

The injustice (in my opinion) are the parents that don't invest time into their kids.

Read to them, teach them, love them and see what kind of person they turn out to be.

Opposed to setting them in front of a television or buying them video games and leaving them in their room.


Injustice or a Crime?

Now people know what I meant by suppressed freedom of speech...

It reminds of some dictators and their allergy to books... what an administration here!!!

CarrieMpls said:

Icenine, you just brought back some memories for me... I grew up reading all of Judy Blumes books but I forgot her name after all these years...same with Robert Cormier and Roald Dahl...I also enjoyed S.E. Hintons books...I think that was her name...The Outsiders etc.

klaatu said:

What administration?

DigitalLisa said:

If you are too intelligent and educated your eyes are more trained oon the wrongdoings of our "elected" representative.

But the ignorant is like sheep that can be guided easily and without any discussion...

WTF!!! When I was a kid, a lot of the books on the list were REQUIRED reading. Maya Angelou? She's on the list? People have the nerve to complain about the kids today and how they don't learn anything in school. Yeah that's because all the books they need are either burned or censored. What's scary is that these kids are going to be inheriting this country someday. These kids are going to be our future?

F*ck that, starting tomorrow I'm going to buy some of these banned books and give them to the students in my class. I'll be damned if I let these kids grow up as mindless sheep. Of course I'll get the parents input as well.
[This message was edited Thu Apr 24 9:53:38 PDT 2003 by NovaAngel]

I remember this being banned..they tried to mess with the tesseract

CarrieMpls said:

my 5th grade teacher had us read roald dahl's b.f.g., which is a kick-ass book

whoa, most of those books on that list i read when i wuz growin up...ain't nothin wrong with 'em, why ban 'em?