LibGuides: Banned and Challenged Books: Frequently Challenged Books

Most Challenged Books by Year

Every year, the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) compiles and releases data about attempted book bans. In 2024, 2,452 unique titles were challenged, a number that is significantly higher than the average of 273 unique titles challenged annually from 2001–2020. Recent book challenges have overwhelmingly targeted books written by or about people of color and LGBTQIA+ individuals. Currently, most attempts at censorship come from organized movements and government entities; only 16% came from parents and 5% from individual library users.

Read more about the Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2024 and check out the archive of Top 10 Lists dating back to 2001.

These Books Have Been Challenged Elsewhere - Check Them Out at Metro State

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (National Book Award Winner) by Sherman Alexie
Book Résumé: 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. (Fiction, Young Adult)
Challenged for: profanity, sexual references, gambling, underage drinking, and for its religious viewpoint
All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson
Book Résumé: 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. (Non-Fiction, Young Adult)
Challenged for: LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit 
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Book Résumé: The story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove, the tragic heroine of Toni Morrison’s haunting first novel, grew out of her memory of a girlhood friend who wanted blue eyes. Shunned by the town’s prosperous black families, as well as its white families, Pecola lives with her alcoholic father and embittered, overworked mother in a shabby two-room storefront that reeks of the hopeless destitution that overwhelms their lives. In awe of her clean well-groomed schoolmates, and certain of her own intense ugliness, Pecola tries to make herself disappear as she wishes fervently, desperately for the blue eyes of a white girl. (Fiction, Adult)
Challenged for: depiction of sexual assault, depiction of incest, claimed to be sexually explicit, EDI content
Crank by Ellen Hopkins
Book Résumé: Kristina Georgia Snow is the perfect daughter, gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. But on a trip to visit her absentee father, Kristina disappears and Bree takes her place. Bree is the exact opposite of Kristina. Through a boy, Bree meets the monster: crank. And what begins as a wild ecstatic ride turns into a struggle through hell for her mind, her soul – her life. (Fiction, Young Adult)
Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit, depiction of drug use
Flamer by Mike Curato
Book Résumé: 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. (Fiction, Young Adult)
Challenged for: LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit 
Gender Queer: a Memoir by Maia Kobabe
Book Résumé: 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… (Non-Fiction, Young Adult)
Challenged for: LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit
Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison
Book Résumé: Mike Munoz 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” (Fiction, Adult)
Challenged for: LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Book Résumé: 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. (Fiction, Young Adult)
Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit 
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
Book Résumé: Greg Gaines is the last master of high school espionage, able to disappear at will into any social environment. He has only one friend, Earl, and together they spend their time making movies, their own incomprehensible versions of Coppola and Herzog cult classics. Until Greg’s mother forces him to rekindle his childhood friendship with Rachel. Rachel has been diagnosed with leukemia — cue extreme adolescent awkwardness — but a parental mandate has been issued and must be obeyed…. (Fiction, Young Adult)
Challenged for: profanity and claimed to be sexually explicit
Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez
Book Résumé: Out of Darkness is a work of historical young adult fiction, loosely based on an actual school explosion that took place in New London, Texas, in 1937. Ashley Hope Perez has taken the explosion as her backdrop and imagined a diverse cast of characters whose broken lives are utterly captivating and tragically entangled with the school and the explosion. The central story is that of two teenagers: Naomi, who is Mexican, and Wash, who is black. It’s a gripping novel about race, segregation, love, and the forces that destroy people. (Fiction, Young Adult)
Challenged for: depictions of abuse and claimed to be sexually explicit
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Book Résumé: A coming of age novel about Charlie, a freshman in high school who is a wallflower, shy and introspective, and very intelligent. He deals with the usual teen problems, but also with the suicide of his best friend. (Fiction, Young Adult)
Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit, LGBTQIA+ content, depiction of sexual assault, depiction of drug use, profanity
Sold by Patricia McCormick
Book Résumé: Thirteen-year-old Lakshmi leaves her poor mountain home in Nepal thinking that she is to work in the city as a maid only to find that she has been sold into the sex slave trade in India and that there is no hope of escape. (Fiction, Young Adult)
Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit, depiction of sexual assault
Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
Book Résumé: Tricks is a young adult verse novel by Ellen Hopkins, released in August 2009. It tells the converging narratives of five troubled teenage protagonists. (Fiction, Young Adult)
Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit