FILE - In this Oct. 10, 2016 file photo, author and filmmaker Sherman Alexie appears at a celebration of Indigenous Peoples' Day at Seattle's City Hall. Alexie is included in a list of authors who wrote books that were among the 100 most subjected to censorship efforts over the past decade, as compiled by the American Library Association. Alexie's prize-winning “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” came in at No. 1. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Toni Morrison is on the list. So are John Green and Harper Lee. And John Steinbeck and Margaret Atwood. All wrote books that were among the 100 most subjected to censorship efforts over the past decade, as compiled by the American Library Association.
Sherman Alexie's prize-winning "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" came in at No. 1, followed by Dav Pilkey's "Captain Underpants" picture book series and Jay Asher's young adult novel "Thirteen Reasons Why." Objections raised by parents and other community members have ranged from explicit language and depictions of drug use in Alexie's novel to Asher's theme of suicide.
"A lot of the books on the list also reflect a growing trend in recent years to challenge books by people of color and books from the LGBTQ community," says Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the library association's Office for Intellectual Freedom. Examples include Morrison's "The Bluest Eye," about a Black girl raped by her father; Alex Gino's "George," about a transgender child; and Justin Richardson's and Peter Parnell's picture book about two gay penguins, "And Tango Makes Three."
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FILE - In this Nov. 8, 2006 file photo, American Nobel laureate Toni Morisson smiles during a press conference at the Louvre Museum in Paris. Morisson is included in a list of authors who wrote books that were among the 100 most subjected to censorship efforts over the past decade, as compiled by the American Library Association. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)
The list was announced Monday as the library association prepares to mark its annual Banned Books Week.
Green's debut novel, "Looking for Alaska," was ranked fourth, with others in the top 10 including E.L. James' explicit blockbuster "50 Shades of Grey," Raina Telgemeier's graphic novel "Drama" and Lauren Myracle's "Internet Girls" series.
As with its yearly snapshots of most challenged books, the ALA defines a "challenge" as a "formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness." The list is based on news reports and on accounts submitted from libraries and others in the local community, although the ALA believes many challenges go unreported. The association does not formally count the number of times books are actually removed from a library shelf or from a school reading list.
FILE - In this July 21, 2015, file photo, author John Green attends the premiere of "Paper Towns" in New York. Green is included in a list of authors who wrote books that were among the 100 most subjected to censorship efforts over the past decade, as compiled by the American Library Association. Green's debut novel, “Looking for Alaska,” was ranked fourth. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
The decade list overall is a mixture of old standards such as Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" and Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and more recent works such as Stephen Chbosky's "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" and Suzanne Collins' multimillion selling "The Hunger Games," which has been accused of being anti-family and promoting violence. Others included were Atwood's Dystopian classic "The Handmaid's Tale," Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" and J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye."
Most of the books are fiction, but the list also includes such nonfiction works as Jeanette Walls' memoir about growing up with dysfunctional parents, "The Glass Castle," and "Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl," which has faced challenges for the Jewish girl's emerging sexual feelings and physical changes as she and her family hide from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II. Frank was 15 when she was captured in 1944, and she died in a concentration camp the following year.
"There are actually two lines of objections to the Anne Frank diary," Caldwell-Stone says. "One line is about her physical attraction to a boy (Peter Schiff, whom she met in school) and there were also objections that it was inappropriate for someone 12 years old to learn about the Holocaust. It was too much of a downer. It was not uplifting to young people."
Here's the full list.
Top 100 most banned and challenged books: 2010-2019
- 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
RELATED: The top 10 books people wanted removed from schools and libraries in 2019
The top 10 books people wanted removed from schools and libraries in 2019
1. George by Alex Gino
Reasons: challenged, banned, restricted, and hidden to avoid controversy; for LGBTQIA+ content and a transgender character; because schools and libraries should not “put books in a child’s hand that require discussion”; for sexual references; and for conflicting with a religious viewpoint and “traditional family structure”
2. Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin
Reasons: challenged for LGBTQIA+ content, for “its effect on any young people who would read it,” and for concerns that it was sexually explicit and biased
3. A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss, illustrated by EG Keller
Reasons: Challenged and vandalized for LGBTQIA+ content and political viewpoints, for concerns that it is “designed to pollute the morals of its readers,” and for not including a content warning
4. Sex is a Funny Word by Cory Silverberg, illustrated by Fiona Smyth
Reasons: Challenged, banned, and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content; for discussing gender identity and sex education; and for concerns that the title and illustrations were “inappropriate”
5. Prince & Knight by Daniel Haack, illustrated by Stevie Lewis
Reasons: Challenged and restricted for featuring a gay marriage and LGBTQIA+ content; for being “a deliberate attempt to indoctrinate young children” with the potential to cause confusion, curiosity, and gender dysphoria; and for conflicting with a religious viewpoint
6. I Am Jazz by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings, illustrated by Shelagh McNicholas
Reasons: Challenged and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content, for a transgender character, and for confronting a topic that is “sensitive, controversial, and politically charged”
7. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Reasons: Banned and challenged for profanity and for “vulgarity and sexual overtones”
8. Drama written and illustrated by Raina Telgemeier
Reasons: Challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and for concerns that it goes against “family values/morals”
9. Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
Reasons: Banned and forbidden from discussion for referring to magic and witchcraft, for containing actual curses and spells, and for characters that use “nefarious means” to attain goals
10. And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson illustrated by Henry Cole
Reason: Challenged and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content
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