Classic Controversies
This 1960 novel by Harper Lee was banned for its racial themes.
What is To Kill a Mockingbird?
This amendment protects Americans’ right to free speech and press.
What is the First Amendment?
This children’s author of Green Eggs and Ham has faced bans for “racist imagery.”
Who is Dr. Seuss?
Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls was banned in this country for its criticism of the Spanish Civil War.
What is Spain?
Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give was banned for depicting this movement.
What is Black Lives Matter?
J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye has often been banned for what?
What is profanity/swearing?
This organization tracks and fights censorship of books in the U.S.
What is the American Library Association?
This author’s Harry Potter series made her one of the most banned writers in the U.S.
Who is J.K. Rowling?
The Diary of Anne Frank was banned in Lebanon for “promoting sympathy” toward this group.
Who are Jewish people?
This bestselling YA fantasy by Sarah J. Maas faced bans for sexual content.
What is A Court of Thorns and Roses?
John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men has been challenged for “offensive language” and for portraying this marginalized group.
Who are people with disabilities?
"Banned Books Week” was first celebrated in this decade.
What are the 1980s?
Author of Slaughterhouse-Five, whose works were banned for profanity, anti-war themes, and “unpatriotic” content.
Who is Kurt Vonnegut?
George Orwell’s Animal Farm was banned in this East African country because talking pigs were seen as disrespectful to the nation’s leader.
What is Kenya?
Sherman Alexie’s novel was pulled from schools in Idaho in 2014 despite winning this major award.
What is the National Book Award?
George Orwell’s Animal Farm was banned in the USSR for criticizing this political system.
What is communism?
This landmark Supreme Court case in 1969 protected students’ right to free speech in schools, famously involving black armbands protesting the Vietnam War.
What is Tinker v. Des Moines?
This Black Nobel Prize winner’s novels (Beloved, The Bluest Eye) are frequently targeted.
Who is Toni Morrison?
Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code was banned in several countries, including India and Lebanon, for being offensive to this religion.
What is Christianity?
Jason Reynolds’s All American Boys was challenged for its portrayal of this modern issue.
What is police brutality?
This dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury is ironically about burning books.
What is Fahrenheit 451?
The Freedom to Read Statement was issued jointly in 1953 by the ALA and this association of publishers.
What is the American Book Publishers Council?
This American novelist’s works (The Grapes of Wrath) were banned for their “socialist themes.”
Who is John Steinbeck?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago was banned in the USSR because it exposed this brutal system of forced labor camps.
What are Soviet gulags?
Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus was banned in Tennessee for depictions of this historical atrocity.
What is the Holocaust?