What I Know Now, Rodger Larson. Memorial Library System, Montgomery County, TX: Challenged but retained. Complaint: Gay-positive themes.

One Fat Summer, Robert Lipsyte. Ansonia Public Library, Ansonia, CA: Removed from display. Complaint: Masturbation.

The Giver, Lois Lowry. Blue Springs Middle School, Blue Springs, MO: Challenged but retained. Complaint: “Lewd” and “Twisted”.

The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison. Kern High School, Bakersfield, CA: Challenged but retained. Complaint: Sexually explicit.

Alice the Brave, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. Pirrung Elementary School, Mesquite, TX: Challenged but retained. Complaint: Sexually explicit.

On the Bright Side, Now I’m the Girlfriend of a Sex God, Louise Rennison. Bozeman Montana School District, Bozeman, MT: Challenged but retained. Complaint: “An unstable person seeing a girl reading the book might think from the title that the girl is promiscuous and stalk her.”

Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger. Noble High School, North Berwick, ME: Challenged but retained. Complaint: Profanity.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie. Todd Beamer High School, Federal Way, WA: Removed. Complaint: Sexually explicit.

What My Mother Doesn’t Know, Sonya Sones. Bonnette Junior High School, Deer Park, TX: Challenged but retained. Complaint: Profanity.

America (The Book), Jon Stewart, Ben Karlin, and David Javerbaum. Jackson George Regional Library, Pascagoula, MS: Removed. Complaint: “An image of Supreme Court judges’ faces superimposed on naked bodies.”

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain. Community High School, Normal, IL: Challenged but retained. Complaint: Degrading to African Americans.

Alabama Representative Gerald Allen proposed legislation that would prohibit the use of public funds for the “purchase of textbooks or library materials that promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle.” The bill also proposed that novels with gay protagonists and college textbooks that suggest homosexuality is natural would have to be removed from library shelves and destroyed. The bill would impact all Alabama school, public, and university libraries. While it would ban books like Heather Has Two Mommies, it would also include classic and popular novels with gay characters such as Brideshead Revisited, The Color Purple, and The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Click here to download [.doc] files of Banned & Challenged Books from 387 B.C.E. to the present