Banned Favourite Classic Books

The Catcher in The Rye. Image Lesley Lanir
Did you know that each year hundreds of attempts are made to remove contemporary and classic books from school reading lists and libraries? When books are removed this restricts the access of these crafted works to others.
Each year, the The American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom records hundreds of attempts by individuals and groups to have books removed from library shelves and from classrooms. The ALA publish an annual list of those books which have received the most reports. They also publish a list of the most challenged classics, many of them you have read, here are the top 20:




1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses, by James Joyce
7. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
9. 1984, by George Orwell
11. Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
15. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway

Here are some of the challenges the ALA reports for Salinger's Catcher in the Rye:
"In 1963, a delegation of parents of high school students in Columbus, OH, asked the school board to ban the novel for being "anti-white" and "obscene." The school board refused the request.
Removed from the school libraries in Morris, Manitoba (1982) along with two other books because they violate the committee's guidelines covering "excess vulgar language, sexual scenes, things concerning moral issues, excessive violence, and anything dealing with the occult."
Banned from English classes at the Freeport High School in De Funiak Springs, FL (1985) because it is "unacceptable" and "obscene.""
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck has been banned in several places and burned. A couple of challenges were because it contains the phrase "God damn" and "uses the name of God and Jesus in a "vain and profane manner along with inappropriate sexual references.""
Read here for more reported challenges against favourite classic literature.

Adapted from an article by Lesley Lanir published on Digital Journal


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