Banned Books from Perpich Library

October 15, 2025

Banned Books Week was October 5th-11th. There has been an increase in the attempts by various people and governing bodies to remove “controversial” books from schools and public libraries. The vast majority of these books are about people of color and/or the LGBTQ+ community. Banned Books Week is a way to draw attention to these attempts, combat them, and celebrate our freedom to read. For more information about Banned Books Week, look here.

Library TA Ruth Civettini (Musical Theater 2026) created a display of banned/challenged books in the Perpich library, including the Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2024, according to statistics collected by the American Library Association. See below for the full list of books.

All items on this list are available at the Perpich library. Click on titles for more information.

Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2024

#10
Flamer by Mike Curato
It’s the summer between middle school and high school, and Aiden Navarro is away at camp. Everyone’s going through changes – but for Aiden, the stakes feel higher. As he navigates friendships, deals with bullies, and spends time with Elias (a boy he can’t stop thinking about), he finds himself on a path of self-discovery and acceptance. (Graphic Novel)

#8 (tie)
Sold by Patricia McCormick
Thirteen-year-old Lakshmi leaves her poor mountain home in Nepal thinking that she is to work in the city as a maid only to find that she has been sold into the sex slave trade in India and that there is no hope of escape.

#8 (tie)
Crank by Ellen Hopkins
Kristina Snow is the perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. Then, Kristina meets the monster: crank. And what begins as a wild, ecstatic ride turns into a struggle through hell for her mind, her soul – her life.

#6 (tie)
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
It is a universally acknowledged truth that high school sucks. But on the first day of his senior year, Greg Gaines thinks he’s figured it out. The answer to the basic existential question: How is it possible to exist in a place that sucks so bad? His strategy: remain at the periphery at all times. Keep an insanely low profile. Make mediocre films with the one person who is even sort of his friend, Earl. This plan works for exactly eight hours. Then Greg’s mom forces him to become friends with a girl who has cancer. This brings about the destruction of Greg’s entire life.

#6 (tie)
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words – and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet François Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps”. Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young, who will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.

#5
Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
Five teenagers from different parts of the country. Three girls. Two guys. Four straight. One gay. Some rich. Some poor. Some from great families. Some with no one at all. All living their lives as best they can, but all searching…for freedom, safety, community, family, love. What they don’t expect, though, is all that can happen when those powerful little words “I love you” are said for all the wrong reasons. Five moving stories remain separate at first, then interweave to tell a larger, powerful story – a story about making choices, taking leaps of faith, falling down, and growing up.

#3 (tie)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
This is the story of what it’s like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie’s letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.

#3 (tie)
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment.

#2
Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe
In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, “Gender Queer” is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity.

#1
All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto by George M. Johnson
From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys. Both a primer for teens eager to be allies as well as a reassuring testimony for young queer men of color, “All Boys Aren’t Blue” covers topics such as gender identity, toxic masculinity, brotherhood, family, structural marginalization, consent, and Black joy.

All items on this list are available at the Perpich Library.

Title descriptions are provided by Amazon and/or the publisher.