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The children’s classic Three Billy Goats Gruff was challenged at an elementary school because some felt that the book was too violent for children.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker was challenged in schools because of some who were troubled by the book’s “sexual and societal explicitness”. The book was later approved as appropriate reading by the Board of Education.
The school district removed James Baldwin by Randall Kenan due to gay and lesbian content. The book was returned to high school library shelves in 2001 as part of an ACLU lawsuit settlement.
A bookseller was arrested for selling Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange. The charges were later dropped but the seller closed his store and moved it to another community.
Great Paintings of Children by Margaretta M. Salinger was challenged by some parents who objected to images they viewed as “pornographic” and “perverted.”
Parishioners burned copies of J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings outside a Christ Community Church because they believed the book to be satanic.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl was removed from a secured reference by a librarian who disliked the book’s negative philosophy on life.
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder was banned because of statements considered derogatory towards Native Americans.
Farley Mowat’s Woman in the Mists: The Story of Dian Fossey & the Mountain Gorillas of Africa was removed from a required reading list because of its use of racial slurs, profanity, and content that addressed abortion.
The Unified School District 345 elementary school library retained Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story by Lisa Peters following objections that the book was about evolution and scientific theory.
And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell was challenged due to complaints that the story had “homosexual undertones”. The book is about two male penguins that adopted an abandoned egg.
Declaration of Independence by Vladimir I. Lenin was banned, and bookstore owners who sold the book were subject to a $5,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.
Kathryn Sheehan and Mary Waidner’s book Earth Child was challenged by critics who opposed the author’s advocacy of Hindu beliefs practices.
Talk show host Larry King’s book Tell it to the King was challenged on the premise that it contained foul language and that its content was “an insult to one’s intelligence”.
Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 was banned by the school board because of profane language. The decision was overturned in 1976 by the U.S. 6th Circuit Court.
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume was challenged in school libraries because it was said to be “built around just two themes: sex and anti-Christian behavior.”
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl was challenged by some local parents who felt the book contained sexually offensive passages.
Arthur Miller’s The Crucible was challenged at the Cumberland Valley High School library because of a complaint that alleged the play contained “sick words from the mouths of demon-possessed people.”
Schools removed Jean Fritz’s Around the World in a Hundred Years: Henry the Navigator-Magellan because critics charged that book depicted a negative stereotype of Christianity as anti-intellectual.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis was challenged in schools because its content was said to depict “graphic violence, mysticism, and gore”.
Springs Public School Library removed the illustrated book Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford from their shelves because one image depicted a topless woman lying on the beach.
Author Charleen Touchette’s own father publicly challenged her book It Stops with Me: Memoir of a Canuck Girl, because he felt that one’s family business should not be shared publicly. The book was eventually returned on the shelves.
Baseball Saved Us, a memoir by Ken Mochizuki about life in a WWII Japanese-American internment camp, was challenged because of use of the epithet “Jap.”
The school board banned Male and Female under 18 because of sexually charged language used by a teenage girl in a poem. The book, written by Nancy Larrick and Eve Merriam, later returned to the shelves following a reversal by a U.S. District Court ruling.
Middle schools restricted the Autobiography of Malcolm X, coauthored by Alex Haley, because authorities believed the book advocated racist views and violence against whites.
Jean Anderson’s The Haunting of America was challenged at the Sikes Elementary School because it was assumed that the ghost stories would make children believe in demons.
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