Children's Literature: Challenged Books

Staley Library's juvenile collection contains many of the children's and young adult (YA) titles on The American Library Association's (ALA):

• 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2000-2019,
• 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2000-2009,
• 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-1999,
• Banned and Challenged Children's Books,
• Banned and Challenged YA Books, 
• Banned and Challenged Classics,
• Banned and Challenged Books with Diverse Content, and
• Infographics and Statistics.

Take a look at the list and do a search by "Title" search in our Online Catalog search box (below) for the book you're interested in.

Included on this page:

Useful Websites for Dealing with Book Challenges
Authors Discuss Challenges to their Books
Most Frequently Challenged Books, 2023 @ Staley Library
Researching Banned/Challenged Books @ Staley Library
Databases for Researching Banned Books

The American Library Association (ALA) keeps statistics on and creates lists of challenged books and authors. Books for children and young adults often comprise the majority of these lists.

The following books for (or often read by) children and young adults are on the list of the 10 Most Frequent Challenged Books of 2023:

Other resources useful in researching banned books include these databases (try searching by book title and/or author's name, and include the words "challenged," "banned," or "controversy" in your search): 

Many organizations and individual authors provide assistance for teachers and librarians to deal with book challenges:

Also, try looking for the author's official website, on YouTube, or other online publications. Many authors will comment when their books are censored.

Example: Author Stephen Chbosky commenting on challenges to his book "The Perks of Being a Wallflower."

Author John Green discusses challenges to his book "Looking for Alaska."

Staley Library owns many books exploring the reasons behind and history of book censorship, including the following (remember, Ref. in call numbers indicates a book in the reference collection):

Email: refdesk@millikin.edu