Celebrate Banned Book Week

Banned Books Week (September 27 - October 3, 2020) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it spotlights current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools.

Right now reading banned books feels even more important than in years past. So let's start with someone reading us one of those stories.

And Tango Makes Three

So this week I challenge you to do one of the following

• Read one commonly banned book*
• Donate to the ACLU or the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund 
• Participate in one online banned book week event
• Research what books have been challenged in your own community

* Below I am including several lists of commonly banned books including The Top 100 Most Banned and Challenged Books: 2010-2019 and a top 10 challenged books year by year for the past 20 years which is interesting to look at. While these cover a wide range of topics, generas, and a mix of classics and modern works, these are just a sampling of the numerous books you might choose to read for banned book week.

The Top 100 Most Banned and Challenged Books: 2010-2019 (according to the American Library Association) 

• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
• Captain Underpants (series) by Dav Pilkey
• Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
• Looking for Alaska by John Green
• George by Alex Gino
• And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
• Drama by Raina Telgemeier
• Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James
• Internet Girls (series) by Lauren Myracle
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
• I Am Jazz by Jazz Jennings and Jessica Herthel
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Bone (series) by Jeff Smith
• The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
• Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan
• A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss
• Sex is a Funny Word by Cory Silverberg
• Alice McKinley (series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
• It's Perfectly Normal by Robie H. Harris
• Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
• Scary Stories (series) by Alvin Schwartz
• Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
• A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
• Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
• It's a Book by Lane Smith
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
• What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones
• A Child Called "It" by Dave Pelzer
• Bad Kitty (series) by Nick Bruel
• Crank by Ellen Hopkins
• Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
• Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
• The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby by Dav Pilkey
• This Day in June by Gayle E. Pitman
• This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki
• A Bad Boy Can Be Good For A Girl by Tanya Lee Stone
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• Goosebumps (series) by R.L. Stine
• In Our Mothers' House by Patricia Polacco
• Lush by Natasha Friend
• 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 Holy Bible
• This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson
• Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
• Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
• Gossip Girl (series) by Cecily von Ziegesar
• House of Night (series) by P.C. Cast
• My Mom's Having A Baby by Dori Hillestad Butler
• Neonomicon by Alan Moore
• The Dirty Cowboy by Amy Timberlake
• The Giver by Lois Lowry
• Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
• Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
• Draw Me a Star by Eric Carle
• Dreaming In Cuban by Cristina Garcia
• Fade by Lisa McMann
• The Family Book by Todd Parr
• Feed by M.T. Anderson
• Go the Fuck to Sleep by Adam Mansbach
• Habibi by Craig Thompson
• House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
• Jacob's New Dress by Sarah Hoffman
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• Monster by Walter Dean Myers
• Nasreen’s Secret School by Jeanette Winter
• Saga by Brian K. Vaughan
• Stuck in the Middle by Ariel Schrag
• The Kingdom of Little Wounds by Susann Cokal
• 1984 by George Orwell
• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher
• Awakening by Kate Chopin
• Burned by Ellen Hopkins
• Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
• Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
• Glass by Ellen Hopkins
• Heather Has Two Mommies by Lesle´a Newman
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
• Madeline and the Gypsies by Ludwig Bemelmans
• My Princess Boy by Cheryl Kilodavis
• Prince and Knight by Daniel Haack
• Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology by Amy Sonnie
• Skippyjon Jones (series) by Judith Schachner
• So Far from the Bamboo Grove by Yoko Kawashima Watkins
• The Color of Earth (series) by Tong-hwa Kim
• The Librarian of Basra by Jeanette Winter
• The Walking Dead (series) by Robert Kirkman
• Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
• Uncle Bobby’s Wedding by Sarah S Brannen
• Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

And if you want to explore the past 20 years of banned books consider checking out this list of 10 most challenged books by The American Library Association. (It is interesting to see how books rise and fall each year and a reminder of what series and books were big in different years)