Reader's Place: October 6, 2025
Banned Book Week is October 5 - 11, a week where we celebrate our freedom to read and raise awareness of book censorship issues across the country. Peruse this list of the top 10 most frequently challenged books of 2024, put out annually by the American Library Association.
1. All Boys Aren't Blue, by George M. Johnson (Library Catalog)
Number of challenges: 39
Challenged for: LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit
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.
2. Gender Queer: A Memoir, by Maia Kobabe (Library Catalog)
Number of challenges: 38
Challenged for: LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit
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. Then e created Gender Queer. 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. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.
3. (TIE) The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison (Library Catalog)
Number of challenges: 35
Challenged for: depiction of sexual assault, depiction of incest, claimed to be sexually explicit, EDI content
Eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove, an African-American girl in an America whose love for blonde, blue-eyed children can devastate all others, prays for her eyes to turn blue, so that she will be beautiful, people will notice her, and her world will be different. 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.
4. (TIE) The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky (Library Catalog)
Number of challenges: 35
Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit, LGBTQIA+ content, depiction of sexual assault, depiction of drug use, profanity
The critically acclaimed debut novel from Stephen Chbosky follows observant "wallflower" Charlie as he charts a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, and new friends; sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Devastating loss, young love, and life on the fringes. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie must learn to navigate those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up This novel for teen readers (or wallflowers of more-advanced age) will make you laugh, cry, and perhaps feel nostalgic for those moments when you, too, tiptoed onto the dance floor of life.
5. Tricks, by Ellen Hopkins (Library Catalog)
Number of challenges: 33
Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit
Five troubled teenagers fall into prostitution as they search for freedom, safety, community, family, and love in this verse novel from Ellen Hopkins. When all choice is taken from you, life becomes a game of survival. Five teenagers from different parts of the country. Three girls. Two guys. Four straight. One gay. Some rich. Some poor. Some from great families. Some with no one at all. All living their lives as best they can, but all searching for freedom, safety, community, family, love. What they don't expect, though, is all that can happen when those powerful little words "I love you" are said for all the wrong reasons. Five moving stories remain separate at first, then interweave to tell a larger, powerful story—a story about making choices, taking leaps of faith, falling down, and growing up. A story about kids figuring out what sex and love are all about, at all costs, while asking themselves, "Can I ever feel okay about myself?"
6. (TIE) Looking for Alaska, by John Green (Library Catalog)
Number of challenges: 30
Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit
Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words—and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet François Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps.” Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young, who will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps. Looking for Alaska brilliantly chronicles the indelible impact one life can have on another. A modern classic, this stunning debut marked #1 bestselling author John Green’s arrival as a groundbreaking new voice in contemporary fiction.
7. (TIE) Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, by Jesse Andrews (Library Catalog)
Number of challenges: 30
Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit, profanity
It is a universally acknowledged truth that high school sucks. But on the first day of his senior year, Greg Gaines thinks he's figured it out. The answer to the basic existential question: How is it possible to exist in a place that sucks so bad? His strategy: remain at the periphery at all times. Keep an insanely low profile. Make mediocre films with the one person who is even sort of his friend, Earl. This plan works for exactly eight hours. Then Greg's mom forces him to become friends with a girl who has cancer. This brings about the destruction of Greg's entire life.
8. (TIE) Crank, by Ellen Hopkins (Library Catalog)
Number of challenges: 28
Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit, depiction of drug use
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.
9. (TIE) Sold, by Patricia McCormick (Library Catalog)
Number of challenges: 28
Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit, depiction of sexual assaul
Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal. Though she is desperately poor, her life is full of simple pleasures, like playing hopscotch with her best friend from school, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family's crops, Lakshmi's stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family. He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid in the city. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi journeys to India and arrives at "Happiness House" full of hope. But she soon learns the unthinkable truth: she has been sold into prostitution.
10. Flamer by Mike Curato (Library Catalog)
Number of challenges: 27
Challenged for: LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit
Award-winning author and artist Mike Curato draws on his own experiences in Flamer, his debut graphic novel, telling a difficult story with humor, compassion, and love. 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.
Compiled by Jenny Zbrizher.