Language

Books Banned for Language

54 books · 743 total challenges

BANNED 30 challenges

The Lovely Bones

by Alice Sebold

The Lovely Bones is narrated by Susie Salmon, a fourteen-year-old girl who watches from heaven as her family and killer ...

Sexual ContentViolenceLanguage
BANNED 28 challenges

Breathless

by Jennifer Niven

Breathless follows Claudine Henry through a transformative summer of first love, self-discovery, and sexual awakening be...

Sexual ContentLanguage
BANNED 25 challenges

A Clash of Kings

by George R. R. Martin

A Clash of Kings, the second book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, continues the epic struggle for the Iron Throne ...

Sexual ContentViolenceLanguage
BANNED 25 challenges

Burned

by Ellen Hopkins

Burned tells the story of Pattyn Von Stratten, a seventeen-year-old girl raised in a strict Mormon household who begins ...

Sexual ContentReligious ObjectionsDrug/Alcohol Use
BANNED 25 challenges

The DUFF

by Kody Keplinger

The DUFF follows seventeen-year-old Bianca Piper, who is labeled the 'Designated Ugly Fat Friend' and begins a complicat...

Sexual ContentLanguage
BANNED 25 challenges

The Fault in Our Stars

by John Green

John Green's bestselling novel about two teenagers, Hazel and Augustus, who meet at a cancer support group and fall in l...

Sexual ContentLanguageSensitive Topics
BANNED 25 challenges

This One Summer

by Mariko Tamaki

This One Summer is a graphic novel about Rose and Windy, two girls spending the summer at a lakeside town, navigating th...

Sexual ContentDrug/Alcohol UseLanguage
BANNED 22 challenges

Glass

by Ellen Hopkins

Glass is the sequel to Crank, continuing Kristina Snow's descent into methamphetamine addiction as she loses custody of ...

Sexual ContentDrug/Alcohol UseLanguage
BANNED 20 challenges

Native Son

by Richard Wright

Richard Wright's landmark 1940 novel follows Bigger Thomas, a young Black man in 1930s Chicago whose life spirals after ...

ViolenceSexual ContentRacial Content
BANNED 20 challenges

Perfect

by Ellen Hopkins

Perfect follows four teenagers whose pursuit of perfection leads them into eating disorders, steroid abuse, drug addicti...

Sexual ContentDrug/Alcohol UseLGBTQ+ Themes
BANNED 20 challenges

Tilt

by Ellen Hopkins

Tilt follows three teenagers whose lives intersect around love, sex, and identity, told in Ellen Hopkins's signature ver...

Sexual ContentDrug/Alcohol UseLanguage
BANNED 18 challenges

Beautiful

by Amy Reed

Beautiful follows Cassie as she reinvents herself at a new school, falling into a world of drugs, sex, and toxic friends...

Sexual ContentDrug/Alcohol UseLanguage
BANNED 18 challenges

Fallout

by Ellen Hopkins

Fallout follows the three children of Kristina Snow from the Crank trilogy as they navigate the lasting damage of their ...

Sexual ContentDrug/Alcohol UseLanguage
BANNED 18 challenges

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

by Erika L. Sánchez

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter follows Julia Reyes, a first-generation Mexican American teenager dealing with he...

Sexual ContentLanguageDrug/Alcohol Use
BANNED 18 challenges

Song of Solomon

by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison's third novel follows Macon 'Milkman' Dead III on a journey through American history and his own family's ...

Sexual ContentViolenceLanguage
BANNED 18 challenges

The Haters

by Jesse Andrews

The Haters follows three jazz camp dropouts who start a band and go on a chaotic road trip through the American South. F...

Sexual ContentLanguageDrug/Alcohol Use
BANNED 18 challenges

The Poet X

by Elizabeth Acevedo

The Poet X follows Xiomara Batista, a Dominican American teenager in Harlem who pours her frustrations with her strict r...

Sexual ContentReligious ObjectionsLanguage
BANNED 18 challenges

What Girls Are Made Of

by Elana K. Arnold

What Girls Are Made Of follows sixteen-year-old Nina Faye as she searches for love and validation through her relationsh...

Sexual ContentLanguage
BANNED 16 challenges

I'll Give You the Sun

by Jandy Nelson

I'll Give You the Sun follows twins Jude and Noah, whose bond is shattered by secrets, grief, and the discovery of Noah'...

LGBTQ+ ThemesSexual ContentLanguage
BANNED 16 challenges

Monday's Not Coming

by Tiffany D. Jackson

Monday's Not Coming follows Claudia, a Black teenager whose best friend Monday goes missing and no one seems to care eno...

ViolenceLanguageRacial Content
BANNED 16 challenges

Smoke

by Ellen Hopkins

Smoke is the sequel to Burned, continuing Pattyn Von Stratten's story as she deals with devastating loss, her sister's r...

Sexual ContentViolenceDrug/Alcohol Use
BANNED 16 challenges

The Female of the Species

by Mindy McGinnis

The Female of the Species follows Alex Craft, a girl who killed the man who raped and murdered her sister, and the two c...

Sexual ContentViolenceLanguage
BANNED 16 challenges

Traffick

by Ellen Hopkins

Traffick is the sequel to Tricks, following five teenagers trapped in sex trafficking as they fight to escape and rebuil...

Sexual ContentViolenceDrug/Alcohol Use
BANNED 15 challenges

A Clockwork Orange

by Anthony Burgess

Anthony Burgess' dystopian novel tied for #8 on ALA's 2025 most-challenged books list, decades after its first censorshi...

ViolenceSexual ContentLanguage
BANNED 15 challenges

Saga, Volume One

by Brian K. Vaughan

Brian K. Vaughan's Eisner-winning graphic novel has ~5 bans....

Sexual ContentViolenceLanguage
BANNED 15 challenges

The Color Purple

by Alice Walker

Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about Black women's lives and freedom became a film and Broadway musical....

Sexual ContentViolenceLanguage
BANNED 14 challenges

Forever for a Year

by B. T. Gottfred

Forever for a Year follows Carolina and Trevor through the highs and lows of their first serious relationship, told in a...

Sexual ContentLanguage
BANNED 14 challenges

Paper Towns

by John Green

John Green's novel about Quentin Jacobsen, who spends a wild night with his enigmatic neighbor Margo Roth Spiegelman bef...

Sexual ContentLanguage
BANNED 14 challenges

Regretting You

by Colleen Hoover

Colleen Hoover's novel about a mother and daughter whose relationship is torn apart by secrets after a devastating famil...

Sexual ContentLanguage
BANNED 14 challenges

The Carnival at Bray

by Jessie Ann Foley

The Carnival at Bray follows Maggie Lynch, a Chicago teenager transplanted to a small Irish town in 1993, navigating gri...

Sexual ContentDrug/Alcohol UseLanguage
BANNED 14 challenges

The Sun and Her Flowers

by Rupi Kaur

The Sun and Her Flowers is Rupi Kaur's second poetry collection, exploring themes of growth, ancestry, immigration, loss...

Sexual ContentLanguage
BANNED 14 challenges

We Are the Ants

by Shaun David Hutchinson

We Are the Ants follows Henry Denton, a teen who has been periodically abducted by aliens and is now given a choice: pre...

LGBTQ+ ThemesSexual ContentViolence
BANNED 10 challenges

As I Lay Dying

by William Faulkner

William Faulkner's novel told through 15 different narrators as the Bundren family transports their matriarch's body acr...

LanguageSexual ContentSensitive Topics
BANNED 10 challenges

Ready Player One

by Ernest Cline

Ernest Cline's science fiction novel set in a dystopian 2045, where teenager Wade Watts hunts for an Easter egg hidden i...

Sexual ContentLanguage
BANNED 9 challenges

Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, and a Dream

by H.G. Bissinger

H.G. Bissinger's nonfiction account of the 1988 season of the Permian High School Panthers football team in Odessa, Texa...

LanguageRacial Content
BANNED 9 challenges

Heart Bones

by Colleen Hoover

Colleen Hoover's novel about Beyah Grim, who escapes her difficult life to spend the summer with her estranged father on...

Sexual ContentLanguage
BANNED 8 challenges

Hey, Kiddo: How I Lost My Mother, Found My Father, and Dealt with Family Addiction

by Jarrett J. Krosoczka

Jarrett J. Krosoczka's graphic memoir about growing up with a mother addicted to heroin, being raised by his grandparent...

Drug/Alcohol UseLanguageSensitive Topics
BANNED 8 challenges

Slammed

by Colleen Hoover

Colleen Hoover's debut novel about Layken, who moves to Michigan and falls for her neighbor Will, only to discover he's ...

Sexual ContentLanguage
BANNED 7 challenges

Girl in Translation

by Jean Kwok

Jean Kwok's semi-autobiographical novel about Kimberly Chang, a young girl who immigrates from Hong Kong to Brooklyn and...

Sexual ContentLanguage
BANNED 7 challenges

Point of Retreat

by Colleen Hoover

The sequel to Colleen Hoover's Slammed, continuing the love story of Layken and Will as they navigate the challenges of ...

Sexual ContentLanguage
BANNED 6 challenges

A Separate Peace

by John Knowles

John Knowles' classic novel about the intense friendship between Gene and Phineas at a New England boarding school durin...

ViolenceLGBTQ+ ContentLanguage
BANNED 6 challenges

Ace of Spades

by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé's debut thriller about two Black students at an elite prep school who become targets of an anonymo...

LGBTQ+ ContentRacial ContentViolence
BANNED 6 challenges

The Sky is Everywhere

by Jandy Nelson

Jandy Nelson's debut novel about 17-year-old Lennie Walker, who copes with her sister's sudden death by falling for two ...

Sexual ContentLanguage
BANNED 6 challenges

This Girl

by Colleen Hoover

The third book in Colleen Hoover's Slammed trilogy, retelling the love story of Will and Layken from Will's perspective....

Sexual ContentLanguage
BANNED 6 challenges

Ulysses

by James Joyce

James Joyce's modernist masterpiece follows Leopold Bloom through a single day in Dublin on June 16, 1904. Originally ba...

Sexual ContentLanguageObscenity
BANNED 5 challenges

An Abundance of Katherines

by John Green

John Green's novel about Colin Singleton, a child prodigy and serial dater of girls named Katherine, who goes on a road ...

Sexual ContentLanguage
BANNED 5 challenges

Bag of Bones

by Stephen King

Stephen King's gothic novel about bestselling author Mike Noonan, who retreats to his lakeside cabin in Maine after his ...

Sexual ContentViolenceLanguage
BANNED 5 challenges

Beauty Queens

by Libba Bray

Libba Bray's satirical novel about teen beauty pageant contestants who survive a plane crash on a deserted island and mu...

Sexual ContentLGBTQ+ ContentLanguage
BANNED 5 challenges

Chain Reaction

by Simone Elkeles

The third book in Simone Elkeles' Perfect Chemistry trilogy, following Luis Fuentes as he falls for his chemistry partne...

Sexual ContentLanguageDrug/Alcohol Use
BANNED 5 challenges

Dark Places

by Gillian Flynn

Gillian Flynn's thriller about Libby Day, the sole survivor of a massacre that killed her family, who begins to investig...

ViolenceSexual ContentLanguage
BANNED 5 challenges

Four Past Midnight

by Stephen King

A collection of four Stephen King novellas including 'The Langoliers,' 'Secret Window, Secret Garden,' 'The Library Poli...

ViolenceLanguageSensitive Topics
BANNED 5 challenges

On the Road

by Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac's defining Beat Generation novel, a semi-autobiographical account of cross-country road trips with his frie...

Sexual ContentDrug/Alcohol UseLanguage
BANNED 5 challenges

The Drawing of the Three

by Stephen King

The second book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series, where gunslinger Roland Deschain opens doorways to 1980s New York a...

ViolenceDrug/Alcohol UseLanguage
BANNED 5 challenges

With the Fire on High

by Elizabeth Acevedo

Elizabeth Acevedo's novel about Emoni Santiago, a teen mother in Philadelphia who dreams of becoming a chef while juggli...

Sexual ContentLanguage