Charles Jensen | Writer

“I’m encouraged by the process of book banning. As long as people want to ban books, it tells me they still recognize literature’s ability to educate, to challenge, and to provoke.”

I recently saw a display of banned books in a bookstore, with a small tag describing the book as banned for “social,” “political,” or “sexual” reasons. Below is a brief listing of commonly banned books I find surprising:

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Cujo by Stephen King
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Separate Peace by John Knowles
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare