Basics
The removal or restriction of a book from a library, school, or curriculum.
What is a book ban?
During the 2021–2024 surge in book challenges, many targeted books dealt with two broad topics.
What are race and LGBTQ+ themes?
The local governing body often decides school policies, budgets, and curriculum issues.
What is the school board?
During the Cold War, fears of communism led to censorship efforts in this decade.
What are the 1950s?
Supporters of book bans often argue they are protecting this group.
Who are children or students?
The organization tracks book challenges and bans in the United States.
What is the American Library Association?
This Harper Lee novel about racial injustice has frequently appeared on banned-book lists.
What is To Kill a Mockingbird?
School board members are usually selected through this process.
What is an election?
The movement of the 1980s and 1990s that sought warning labels and restrictions on certain media and books.
What is the censorship movement (or culture wars movement)?
Opponents of book bans often argue that bans limit this fundamental freedom.
What is access to information (or freedom of expression)?
The term that describes a formal request to remove or restrict a book.
What is a book challenge?
This novel about a dystopian society where books are burned was written by Ray Bradbury.
What is Fahrenheit 451?
This describes the planned educational content taught in schools.
What is the curriculum?
The Scopes Trial of 1925 focused on whether schools could teach this scientific theory.
What is evolution?
This term describes the removal of content as it is considered inappropriate.
What is censorship?
This constitutional amendment is often cited in debates over book bans because it protects freedom of speech.
What is the First Amendment?
This coming-of-age novel by J.D. Salinger has been challenged for language and mature themes.
What is The Catcher in the Rye?
The Supreme Court case that ruled that school officials cannot remove library books simply because they disagree with the ideas in them.
What is Board of Education v. Pico (1982)?
This period of intense anti-communist suspicion was led by Senator Joseph McCarthy.
What is McCarthyism?
Phrase that is used when an individual or group avoids speech out of controversy.
The organization that tracks book challenges and bans in the United States.
What is the American Library Association (ALA)?
This Toni Morrison novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize, has been challenged because of its depiction of slavery.
What is Beloved?
School boards must balance community concerns with this constitutional principle.
What is freedom of expression (or First Amendment rights)?
This Supreme Court case established that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."
What is Tinker v. Des Moines (1969)?
Critics argue that widespread book bans have this effect on students.