Every year, the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom releases statistics on the number of challenges to books and other materials in libraries, schools, and universities. A challenge is the attempt to remove or restrict access to items in a collection based upon the objections of an individual or group. 2022 was a record year for book challenges. According to the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom, 2022 had the "highest number of attempted book bans since ALA began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than 20 years ago."
There were 1,269 documented challenges targeting 2,571 titles. This is almost double the number of challenges and titles from last year. For more information, visit ALA's Banned Books Week website and celebrate your freedom to read.
Below is the top 13 titles (there are ties for #5 and #10) and the most cited reasons for why they are challenged. All data is from the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom.
The Iowa City Public Library believes that intellectual freedom is a constitutional right and integral to a democratic society. Libraries provide information, ideas and resources in a variety of formats, enabling an informed citizenry. We respect the right to privacy and encourage people to freely access and explore ideas. For more information, read our Board of Trustee's statement on the importance of intellectual freedom.
Gender queer
Kobabe, Maia, author, artist.
306.768 /Kobabe
"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 the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia's intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity--what it means and how to think about it--for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere."--Amazon.
All boys aren't blue : a memoir-manifesto
Johnson, George M. (George Matthew), 1985-
306.7662 /Johnson
Memoir
In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys.
Documented challenges: 86; Challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and containing text considered sexually explicit
- Anne M
The bluest eye
Morrison, Toni.
FICTION Morrison, Toni
"NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A PARADE BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME • From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtly and grace. In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. Here, Morrison’s writing is “so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry” (The New York Times)."
Documented challenges: 73; Challenged for depiction of sexual abuse and containing text considered sexually explicit.
- Anne M
Flamer
Curato, Mike, author, illustrator.
GRAPHIC NOVEL Curato
"It's the summer between middle school and high school, and Aiden Navarro is away at camp. Everyone's going through changes--but for Aiden, the stakes feel higher. As he navigates friendships, deals with bullies, and spends time with Elias (a boy he can't stop thinking about), he finds himself on a path of self-discovery and acceptance."--Page [4] of cover.
Documented challenges: 62; Challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and containing images considered sexually explicit
- Anne M
Looking for Alaska
Green, John, 1977-
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Green, John
Sixteen-year-old Miles' first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal car crash.
Documented challenges: 55; Challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and containing text considered sexually explicit
- Anne M
The perks of being a wallflower
Chbosky, Stephen.
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Chbosky, Stephen
"Read the cult-favorite coming-of-age story that takes a sometimes heartbreaking, often hysterical, and always honest look at high school in all its glory. Now a major motion picture starring Logan Lerman and Emma Watson, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a funny, touching, and haunting modern classic. 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. A years-long #1 New York Times bestseller, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults and Best Book for Reluctant Readers, and with millions of copies in print, this novel for teen readers (or “wallflowers” of more-advanced age) will make you laugh, cry, and perhaps feel nostalgic for those moments when you, too, tiptoed onto the dance floor of life."
Documented challenges: 55. Challenged for depictions of sexual abuse, LGBTQIA+ content, drug use, profanity, and considered sexually explicit.
- Anne M
Lawn boy : a novel
Evison, Jonathan, author.
FICTION Evison Jonathan
"Mike Muñoz is a young Mexican American not too many years out of high school--and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew. Though he tries time and again to get his foot on the first rung of that ladder to success, he can't seem to get a break. But then things start to change for Mike, and after a raucous, jarring, and challenging trip, he finds he can finally see the future and his place in it"--
Documented challenges: 54; Challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and containing text considered sexually explicit.
- Anne M
The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian
Alexie, Sherman, 1966-
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Alexie, Sherman
Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.
Documented challenges: 52; Challenged for profanity and containing text considered sexually explicit
- Anne M
Out of darkness
Pérez, Ashley Hope, author.
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Perez Ashley
New London, Texas. 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them. They know the people who enforce them. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive. (Set during the 1937 New London school explosion, the deadliest school disaster in American history.).
Documented challenges: 50; Challenged for depictions of abuse and containing text considered sexually explicit
- Anne M
A court of mist and fury
Maas, Sarah J, author.
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Maas, Sarah
Though Feyre now has the powers of the High Fae, her heart remains human, but as she navigates the feared Night Court's dark web of politics, passion, and dazzling power, a greater evil looms--and she might be key to stopping it.
Documented challenges: 48; Challenged for text considered sexually explicit
- Anne M
Crank
Ellen Hopkins
eAudio
Kristina Georgia Snow is the perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. But on a trip to visit her absentee father, she meets a boy who introduces her to crank. At first she finds it freeing, but soon Kristina's personality disappears inside the drug. What began as a wild, ecstatic ride turns into a struggle through hell for her mind, her soul, and her life.
Documented challenges: 48; Challenged for text containing drug use and containing text considered sexually explicit
- Anne M
Me & Earl & the dying girl
Andrews, Jesse.
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Andrews Jesse
Seventeen-year-old Greg has managed to become part of every social group at his Pittsburgh high school without having any friends, but his life changes when his mother forces him to befriend Rachel, a girl he once knew in Hebrew school who has leukemia.
Documented challenges: 48; Challenged for text containing profanity and containing text considered sexually explicit
- Anne M
This book is gay
Dawson, Juno, author.
306.76 /Dawson
"There's a long-running joke that, after coming out as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or intersex person, you should receive a membership card and instruction manual. This is that instruction manual. You're welcome. Inside this revised and updated edition, you'll find the answers to all the questions you ever wanted to ask: from sex to politics, hooking up to stereotypes, coming out and more. This candid, funny, and uncensored exploration of sexuality and what it's like to grow up LGBTQIA+ also includes real stories from people across the gender and sexual spectrums, not to mention hilarious illustrations"--Back cover.
Documented challenges: 48; Challenged for LGBTQIA+ content, providing sexual education, and text considered sexually explicit
- Anne M
Documented challenges: 151. Challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and containing images considered sexually explicit
- Anne M