These Are the Most Frequently Challenged and Banned Books of the Past 8 Years

Photo by Susan Q Yin on Unsplash

Maus, a graphic novel about the Holocaust by Art Spiegelman, gained media attention (and new readers) earlier this year when a Tennessee school board banned the book from its curriculum. This of course made many people more interested in the story and it quickly rose to Amazon’s best seller list.

Through the years, many books have been challenged and even banished from school curriculum. These range from books that deal with LGBTQ+ issues to ones that include instances of drug and alcohol use.

The graphic below outlines the books that have been banned and challenged the most over the past 8 years.

The most banned books in 2020 were the following:

1. George by Alex Gino
2. Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds
3. All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
4. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
5. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
6. Something Happened in Our Town: A Child’s Story About Racial Injustice by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins, and Ann Hazzard
7. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
8. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
9. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
10. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

The most banned and challenged books of all time are these classics:

1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
3. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
4. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
5. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
6. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
7. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
8. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
9. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
10. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

How many of these books have you read?