Staff Picks
Challenged!
- Kimberly Jones
- Sunday, September 27, 2020
Collection
This year we celebrate Banned Book Week September 27-October 3.
What’s that? Well, since the 1980s libraries all over the world celebrate challenged titles and spread awareness about the freedom to read each year at the end of September.
Why these books? Some people feel like the content of these titles is not appropriate and should be censored and taken off bookshelves. No worries though, the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom works tirelessly to advocate for our right to have access to these titles.
So, what are you waiting for...check out these Young Adult books that have been challenged over the years.

Go Ask Alice
Published in 1999
Alice COULD BE ANYONE. Alice COULD BE SOMEONE YOU KNOW. Alice USES DRUGS. With over a million copies in print, Go Ask Alice has become a classic of our time. This powerful real-life diary of a teenager's struggle with the seductive -- often fatal -- world of drugs and addiction tells the truth about drugs in strong and authentic voice. Tough and uncompromising, honest and disturbing -- and even more poignant today -- Go Ask Alice is page-turning and provocative reading.


The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Published in 2012
A haunting coming of age novel told in a series of letters to an unknown correspondent reveals the life of Charlie, a freshman in high school who is a wallflower, shy and introspective, and very intelligent. It's a story of what it's like to grow up in high school, tracing a course through uncharted territory in the world of first dates, family dramas and new friends.

The Hunger Games
Published in 2009
The book no one can stop talking about . . . In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love. New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Collins delivers equal parts suspense and philosophy, adventure and romance, in this searing novel set in a future with unsettling parallels to our present.

Looking for Alaska
Published in 2005
Sixteen-year-old Miles' first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal car crash.

Beyond Magenta
Transgender Teens Speak out
Published in 2014
"Author and photographer Susan Kuklin met and interviewed six transgender or gender-neutral young adults and used her considerable skills to represent them thoughtfully and respectfully before, during, and after their personal acknowledgment of gender preference. Portraits, family photographs, and candid images grace the pages, augmenting the emotional and physical journey each youth has taken. Each honest discussion and disclosure, whether joyful or heartbreaking, is completely different from the other because of family dynamics, living situations, gender, and the transition these teens make in recognition of their true selves."--Amazon.com, viewed February 12, 2014.

To Kill a Mockingbird
Published in 2014
Harper Lee's Pulitzer prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep south?and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred, available now for the first time as an e-book.One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than thirty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father-a crusading local lawyer-risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.

Two Boys Kissing
Published in 2013
A chorus of men who died of AIDS observes and yearns to help a cross-section of today's gay teens who navigate new love, long-term relationships, coming out, self-acceptance, and more in a society that has changed in many ways.

Eleanor & Park
Published in 2013
“ -- I love you -- New York Times Book Review A Kirkus Reviews An NPR Best Book of 2013

The Hate U Give
Published in 2017
After witnessing her friend's death at the hands of a police officer, Starr Carter's life is complicated when the police and a local drug lord try to intimidate her in an effort to learn what happened the night Kahlil died.