Why was this book banned?

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Updated December 12, 2011

Q. It's the question most often heard from students during Banned Books Week, "Why was this book banned?" More accurately, the question is who challenged this book being in the school or library and wanted it removed, and why, and when and where did this happen — and how did things turn out?

A. The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) maintains information on which books are challenged and why and regularly publishes this information every three years, most recently in the 2010 BBW (Banned Books Week) Resource Guide (actually titled Banned Books: Challenging Our Freedom to Read), edited by Robert P. Doyle of the Illinois Library Association. The book, released in mid-July of 2010, lists challenged and banned books in alphabetical order by the author's last name, and gives the dates and places and reasons that a book was threatened with removal (challenged) and/or was removed (banned) from a library or school.

Doyle also puts together a free yearly brochure (and has since 2003), which can be found as PDF files on the web site of the Illinois Library Association.

You can use the entry for Banned Books: Challenging our Freedom to Read at WorldCat.org — the free online database of library catalogs all over the USA — to search via zip code for the closest public and/or community college library that has an available copy. You might also want to search availability of the previous edition, Banned Books: 2007 Resource Guide. Additional print editions can be found on the list at WorldCat.org, Why was this book banned or challenged.

For more information, see Researching Challenged ("Banned") Books, which also has some online resources.

For print resources, please see the Censorship Bibliography.