Banned Books for Your Book Club

Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.
— Laurie Halse Anderson

Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.
— Virginia Woolf

The Colorado Book Club Resource includes a broad range of titles (each set contains 8+ copies) that are available to book clubs across the state, thanks to the partnership of public libraries. Some of these books have been banned (by state or local governments, libraries, school districts, prisons, etc.) or received challenges from groups or individuals at one time or another. Both are acts of censorship that aim to limit the freedom to read. We also have some sets about censorship itself, offering constructive ways to move forward and resist the censor.

Banned book club sets

Be sure to check out the comprehensive list in the Book Club Resource catalog.

Selections from American Library Association (ALA) lists

The Book Club Resource includes every title on the 2023 Top 10 Most Challenged Books list (we plan on adding any newcomers that appear on the 2024 list):

1. Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe
2. All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
3. This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson
4. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
5. Flamer by Mike Curato
6. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
7. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
8. Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
9. Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan
10. Sold by Patricia McCormick

Other titles from previous top 10 lists

• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
• Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez
• Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison
• A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas

Long list of challenged/banned books* available in the Book Club Resource

These titles have at some point been banned or received challenges. The list is mainly focused on US censorship. No doubt more will be added in future, so be sure to find the updated list in the catalog.

• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
• A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
• A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
• A Separate Peace by John Knowles
• A Study in Scarlet & The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
• All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
• All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
• American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
• American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
• An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
• Animal Farm by George Orwell
• Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl
• Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation
• Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
• As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
• Assata: An Autobiography, by Assata Shakur
• Beartown by Fredrik Backman
• Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin
• Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
• Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• Circe by Madeline Miller
• Crank by Ellen Hopkins
• Dear Martin by Nic Stone
• Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters 
• Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
• Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
• Flamer by Mike Curato
• Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 by Ibram X. Kendi
• Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe
• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
• Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
• Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon
• Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
• Holes by Louis Sachar
• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
• Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall
• How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi
• I Am Jazz by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings
• I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
• Identical by Ellen Hopkins
• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
• Jack of Hearts (and other parts) by L. C. Rosen
• Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison
• Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
• Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• Looking for Alaska by John Green
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult & Jennifer Finney Boylan
• March: Book One by John Lewis and other authors
• March: Book Two by John Lewis and other authors
• March: Book Three by John Lewis and other authors
• Maus
• Maus II
• Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
• Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• Native Son by Richard Wright
• Night by Elie Wiesel
• Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
• Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez
• Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
• Push by Sapphire
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• Sold by Patricia McCormick
• Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
• Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
• Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
• Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds
• The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones
• The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
• The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
• The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X
• The Awakening by Kate Chopin
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
• The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
• The Giver by Lois Lowry
• The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
• The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
• The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
• The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkein
• The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
• The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkein
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkein
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkein
• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
• The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
• The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
• The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
• The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
• The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
• The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
• The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• They Called Us Enemy by George Takei
• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
• This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Traffick by Ellen Hopkins
• Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
• Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
• White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

Books about censorship

• On Censorship: A Public Librarian Examines Cancel Culture in the US, by James LaRue
• Beyond Banned Books: Defending Intellectual Freedom Throughout Your Library, by Kristin Pekoll
• You Can’t Say That!: Writers for Young People Talk About Censorship, Free Expression, and the Stories They Have To Tell, by Leonard S. Marcus
• Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship, by Nadine Strossen
• The First: How To Think About Hate Speech, Campus Speech, Religious Speech, Fake News, Post-Truth, and Donald Trump, by Stanley Fish
• Intellectual Freedom: Stories from a Shifting Landscape by Valeria Nye

Articles/websites

• Banned in the USA: Beyond the Shelves (PEN)
• Banned Books Week resources
• War and Peace in the Library

*This list is likely not exhaustive. Sources include: ALA, Wikipedia, A Seat at the Table Books, PEN, CDPHE, CBS, Google