Yes, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close Is Banned!

Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel follows nine-year-old Oskar Schell on a quixotic mission across New York City after his father dies in the September 11 attacks. Oskar finds a mysterious key in his father’s closet and becomes convinced it opens something important, something that will bring him closer to the man he lost. The book is inventive and emotionally devastating, using photographs, blank pages, and unconventional typography to mirror Oskar’s grief and his frantic attempts to impose order on a senseless event. Foer captures the way children process trauma through magical thinking: if I can just find the lock, everything will make sense again.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close has been challenged 11 times across Florida, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Idaho, primarily for sexual content. The objections stem from brief passages involving adult characters, not the child protagonist, but that distinction rarely matters in challenge hearings. This is a novel about a child trying to understand the worst day in modern American history. It was a National Book Award finalist and became a major film. Removing it from schools erases one of the most empathetic literary responses to 9/11, a book that teaches young readers that grief is messy, confusing, and survivable.