Apart from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter phenomenon, the most challenged books of the 21st century (2000-2005) include a number of books taught as classic and “relevant” books in terms of content and history.

In celebrating Banned Books Week (September 23-30, 2006), the American Library Association (ALA) compiled the top 10 most challenged books from 2000-2005, with the Harry Potter series of books leading the pack. The 10 most challenged books of the 21st Century (2000-2005) are:

1. Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
2. “The Chocolate War” by Robert Cormier
3. Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
4. “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck
5. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou
6. “Fallen Angels” by Walter Dean Myers
7. “It’s Perfectly Normal” by Robie Harris
8. Scary Stories series by Alvin Schwartz
9. Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey
10. “Forever” by Judy Blume

All but three of these books also were in the top 10 of the most challenged books of the 1990s. The ALA reports there were more than 3,000 attempts to remove books from schools and public libraries between 2000 and 2005. Challenges are defined as formal, written complaints filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness.

I scan this perpetually developing list, and am continually confounded by the titles that emerge. Start with John Steinbeck’s Nobel Prize-winning Of Mice and Men. Of Mice and Men is a novella written by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it tells the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers in Great Depression-era California.

Based on Steinbeck’s own experiences as a bindle stiff in the 1920s (before the arrival of the Okies he would vividly describe in The Grapes of Wrath), the title is taken from Robert Burns’s poem, To a Mouse, which is often quoted as: “The best-laid plans of mice and men/often go awry,” though the phrase in the original Scots of the poem is “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft agley.”

Required reading in many high schools, Of Mice and Men has been a frequent target of censors for what some consider offensive and vulgar language. Yes in high school, reading this text, along with The Pearl and Cannery Row, charted a new course in reading and in the understanding of the human condition.

Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is a story about the pressures of living in a thoroughly racist society and how profoundly such a society shapes the character of an individual and the dynamics of a family.  It is a story of how one girl strived to surmount such pressures in rural Arkansas. Her story is representative of many African-Americans in the South at that time.

One out of 5,718 challenges reported to or recorded by the Office for Intellectual Freedom, as compiled by the Office for Intellectual Freedom, American Library Association. The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom does not claim comprehensiveness in recording challenges. Research suggests that for each challenge reported there are as many as four or five which go unreported.

The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), the fastest-growing division of the American Library Association (ALA), has announced its 2008 list of Best Books for Young Adults. The list of 85 books, drawn from 216 official nominations, is presented annually at the ALA Midwinter Meeting. The books, recommended for those ages 12-18, meet the criteria of both good quality literature and appealing reading for teens.

The list comprises a wide range of genres and styles, including contemporary realistic fiction that reflects the diversity of the teen experience, nonfiction that brings to teens an awareness of the world they live in and its history, and fantastical stories told in both narrative and graphic formats.

In addition, the Best Books for Young Adults Committee created a Top Ten list of titles from the final list that exemplify the quality and range of literature being published for teens. (Starred items denote Top Ten selections.)

“This year’s list demonstrates the variety of outstanding choices to entice and enrich teen readers. There is something here to appeal to every reader, and also to attract teens who don’t regularly read to the pleasures of a good book.” ~~ Holly Koelling, committee chair.

Fiction

Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. Illus. by Ellen Forney. Little, Brown, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-316-01368-0; $16.99.

Alexie, Sherman. Flight. Grove/Atlantic Black Cat, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-8021-7037-8; $13.00.

Anderson, Laurie Halse. Twisted. Penguin Group USA/Viking, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-670-06101-3; $16.99.

Asher, Jay. Thirteen Reasons Why. Penguin Group USA/Razorbill, 2007; ISBN13: 978-1-59514-171-2; $16.99.

Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. 2007. Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Sarah Crichton, $22.00 (978-0-374-10523-5).

Brande, Robin. Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature. Random House/Alfred A. Knopf, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-375-94349-2; $15.99.

Brooks, Martha. Mistik Lake. Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Melanie Kroupa, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-374-34985-1; $16.00.

Burgess, Melvin. Bloodsong. Simon & Schuster/Simon Pulse, 2007; ISBN13: 978-1-4169-3616-9; $7.99.

Cameron, Peter. Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You. Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Frances Foster, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-374-30989-3; $16.00.

Carey, Janet Lee. Dragon’s Keep. Harcourt, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-15-205926-2; $17.00.

Carey, Mike. The Re-Gifters. Illus. by Sonny Liew and Mark Hempel.DC Comics/Vertigo, 2007; ISBN13: 978-1-4012-0303-0; $19.99.

Cassidy, Anne. Looking for JJ. Harcourt, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-15-206190-6; $17.00.

Castellucci, Cecil. Beige. Candlewick, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-7636-3066-9; $16.99.

Clarke, Judith. One Whole and Perfect Day. Front Street, 2007; ISBN13: 978-1-932425-95-6; $16.95.

Compestine, Ying Chang. Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party. Henry Holt, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-8050-8207-4; $16.95.

Cross, Shauna. Derby Girl. Henry Holt, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-8050-8023-0; $16.95.

Cullen, Lynn. I Am Rembrandt’s Daughter. Bloomsbury, 2007; ISBN13: 978-1-59990-046-9; $16.95.

Dowd, Siobhan. A Swift Pure Cry. Random House/David Fickling, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-385-75108-7; $16.99.

Downham, Jenny. Before I Die. Random House/David Fickling, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-385-75155-1; $15.99.

Doyle, Larry. I Love You, Beth Cooper. Illus. by Evan Dorkin. HarperCollins/Ecco, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-06-123617-4; $19.95.

Ellis, Ann Dee. This Is What I Did. Little, Brown, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-316-01363-5; $16.99.

Felin, M. Sindy. Touching Snow. Atheneum, 2007; ISBN13: 978-1-4169-1795-3; $16.99.

Friesen, Gayle. For Now. Kids Can Press, 2007; ISBN13: 978-1-55453-133-2; $7.95.

Gipi. Notes for a War Story. Spectrum. Translated by Spectrum. Illus. by Gipi. Roaring Brook/First Second, 2007; ISBN13: 978-1-59643-261-1; $16.95.

Grey, Christopher. Leonardo’s Shadow: Or, My Astonishing Life as Leonardo da Vinci’s Servant. Simon and Schuster/Atheneum, 2006; ISBN13: 978-1-4169-0543-1; $16.95.

Hale, Shannon. Book of a Thousand Days. Illus. by James Noel Smith.Bloomsbury, 2007; ISBN13: 978-1-59990-051-3; $17.95.

Hemphill, Stephanie. Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath. Random House/Alfred A. Knopf, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-375-83799-9; $15.99.

Hinds, Gareth. Beowulf. Candlewick, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-7636-3022-5; $21.95.

Hornby, Nick. Slam. Penguin Group USA/Putnam, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-399-25048-4; $19.99.

Hosseini, Khaled. A Thousand Splendid Suns. Penguin Group USA/Riverhead Books, 2007; ISBN13: 978-1-59448-950-1; $25.95.

Jenkins, A.M. Repossessed. HarperCollins/HarperTeen, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-06-083568-2; $15.99.

Jocelyn, Marthe. How It Happened in Peach Hill. Random House/Wendy Lamb, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-375-83701-2; $15.99.

Johnston, Tony. Bone by Bone by Bone. Roaring Brook/Deborah Brodie, 2007; ISBN13: 978-1-59643-113-3; $17.95.

Jones, Lloyd. Mister Pip. Dell Publishing/Dial Press, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-385-34106-6; $20.00.

Key, Watt. Alabama Moon. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-374-30184-2; $16.00.

Klass, David. Firestorm. Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Frances Foster, 2006; ISBN13: 978-0-374-32307-3; $17.00.

Knox, Elizabeth. Dreamquake: Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet. Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Frances Foster, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-374-31854-3; $19.00.

Koertge, Ron. Strays. Candlewick, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-7636-2705-8; $16.99.

Lanagan, Margo. Red Spikes. Random House/Alfred A. Knopf, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-375-84320-4; $16.99.

Landy, Derek. Skulduggery Pleasant. HarperCollins, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-06-123115-5; $17.99.

Lat.  Town Boy. Roaring Brook/First Second, 2007; ISBN13: 978-1-59643-331-1; $16.95.

Lockhart, E. Dramarama. Hyperion, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-7868-3815-8; $15.99.

Lyga, Barry. The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl. Houghton Mifflin, 2006; ISBN13: 978-0-618-72392-8; $16.95.

Lyga, Barry. Boy Toy. Houghton Mifflin, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-618-72393-5; $16.95.

MacCready, Robin Merrow. Buried. September 2006. Penguin Group USA/Dutton, 2006; ISBN13: 978-0-525-47724-2; $16.99.

Marillier, Juliet. Wildwood Dancing. Random House/Alfred A. Knopf, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-375-83364-9; $16.99.

McCaughrean, Geraldine. The White Darkness. HarperCollins/HarperTeen, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-06-089035-3; $16.99.

Mieville, China. Un Lun Dun. Random House/Del Rey, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-345-49516-7; $17.95.

Miller, Sarah. Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller. Simon & Schuster/Atheneum, 2007; ISBN13: 978-1-4169-2542-2; $16.99.

Moore, Perry. Hero. Hyperion, 2007; ISBN13: 978-1-4231-0195-6; $16.99.

Murdock, Catherine Gilbert. The Off Season. Houghton Mifflin, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-618-68695-7; $16.00.

Myers, Walter Dean. What They Found: Love on 145th Street. Random House/Wendy Lamb, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-385-32138-9; $15.99.

Olmstead, Robert. Coal Black Horse. Algonquin, 2007; ISBN13: 978-1-56512-521-6; $23.95.

Peet, Mal. Tamar: A Novel of Espionage, Passion, and Betrayal. Candlewick, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-7636-3488-9; $17.99.

Resau, Laura. Red Glass. Random House/Delacorte, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-385-73466-0; $15.99.

Resau, Laura. What the Moon Saw. Random House/Delacorte, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-385-73343-4; $15.95.

The Restless Dead: Ten Original Stories of the Supernatural. Edited by Deborah Noyes. Candlewick, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-7636-2906-9; $16.99.

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Illus. by Mary Grandpre. Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-545-01022-1; $34.99.

Schmidt, Gary D. The Wednesday Wars. Clarion, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-618-72483-3; $16.00.

Sedgwick, Marcus. My Swordhand is Singing. Random House/Wendy Lamb, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-375-84689-2; $15.99.

Selznick, Brian. The Invention of Hugo Cabret: A Novel. Illus. by Brain Selznick. Scholastic, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-439-81378-5; $22.99.

Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. Adapted by Richard Appignanesi. Illus. by Sonia Leong. Abrams/Amulet, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-8109-9325-9; $9.95.

Sharenow, Robert. My Mother the Cheerleader. HarperCollins/Laura Geringer, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-06-114896-5; $16.99

Shusterman, Neal. Unwind. Simon & Schuster, 2007; ISBN13: 978-1-4169-1204-0; $16.99.

Smith, Roland. Peak. Harcourt, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-15-202417-8; $17.00.

Sonnenblick, Jordan. Notes from the Midnight Driver. Scholastic, 2006; ISBN13: 978-0-439-75779-9; $16.99.

St. James, James. Freak Show. Penguin Group USA/Dutton, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-525-47799-0; $18.99.

Tan, Shaun. The Arrival. Illus. by Shaun Tan. Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-439-89529-3; $19.99.

Thompson, Kate. The New Policeman. HarperCollins/Greenwillow, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-06-117427-8; $16.99.

Wallace, Rich. One Good Punch. Random House/Alfred A. Knopf, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-375-81352-8; $15.99.

Weinheimer, Beckie. Converting Kate. Penguin Group USA/Viking, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-670-06152-5; $16.99.

Wiess, Laura. Such a Pretty Girl. Simon & Schuster/MTV, 2007; ISBN13: 978-1-4165-2183-9; $12.00.

Wizner, Jake. Spanking Shakespeare. Random House, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-375-84086-9; $15.99.

Zarr, Sara. Story of a Girl. Little, Brown, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-316-01453-3; $16.99.

Zevin, Gabrielle. Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-374-34946-2; $17.00.
Nonfiction

Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Sarah Crichton, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-374-10523-5; $22.00.

Crisler, Curtis L. Tough Boy Sonatas. Illus. by Floyd Cooper. Boyds Mills Press/Wordsong, 2007; ISBN13: 978-1-932425-77-2; $19.95.

The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss. Edited by Claire Nouvian. University of Chicago Press, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-226-59566-5; $45.00.

Fradin, Judith Bloom and Dennis Brindell Fradin. Jane Addams: Champion of Democracy. Clarion, 2006; ISBN13: 978-0-618-50436-7; $21.00.

Helfer, Andrew. Malcolm X: A Graphic Biography. Illus. by Randy Duburke. Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Hill & Wang, 2006; ISBN13: 978-0-8090-9504-9; $15.95.

Marrin, Albert. The Great Adventure: Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of Modern America. Penguin Group USA/Dutton, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-525-47659-7; $30.00.

Polly, Matthew. American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China. Penguin Group USA/Gotham Books, 2007; ISBN13: 978-1-59240-262-5; $26.00.

Raddatz, Martha. The Long Road Home A Story of War and Family. Penguin Group USA/Putnam Adult, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-399-15382-2; $24.95.

Reef, Catherine. e.e. cummings: a poet’s life. Clarion, 2006; ISBN13: 978-0-618-56849-9; $21.00.

Sis, Peter. The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain. Illus. by Peter Sis. Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Frances Foster, 2007; ISBN13: 978-0-374-34701-7; $18.00.

Tammet, Daniel. Born on a Blue Day: A Memoir: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant. Simon & Schuster/Free Press, 2007; ISBN13: 978-1-4165-3507-2; $24.00.

The members of the Best Books for Young Adults Committee are: Holly Koelling, chair, King County Library System, Issaquah, Wash.; Angelina Benedetti, King County Library System, Issaquah, Wash.; Teresa Brantley, Salem Middle School, Apex, N.C.; Amy Chow, New York Public Library; Ashley Flaherty, Columbus (Ohio) Metropolitan Library; Jacqueline Gropman, Fairfax County Public Library System, Fairfax County, Va.; Summer Hayes, King County Library System, Foster Library, Tukwila, Wash.; Andy Howe, Albuquerque (N.M.) Academy Library; Caroline Kienzle, Apalachicola, Fla.; Connie Mitchell, Carmel (Ind.) High School; Diane Roberts, St. Thomas High School Library, Houston, Texas; Elsworth Rockefeller, Ocean County Library, Point Pleasant Boro, N.J.; Karyn N. Silverman, Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School, New York; Ed Spicer, Allegan, Mich.; Rollie Welch, Cleveland (Ohio) Public Library; Jennifer Mattson, consultant, Booklist, Chicago, Ill.; and Rick Orsillo, administrative assistant, King County Library System, Shoreline, Wash.

While America sleeps in the illusion of freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and the United States Constitution, America’s gatekeepers (in the form of the the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, Oval Office and even our Congress, all of whom have failed miserably at controlling illegal immigration in the USA) are hard at work finding new, creative, under-the-radar ways to press down ever harder that growing thumb of “security” on the average American citizen.

Too many Americans, asleep at the wheel in their sheltered cocoons of ambivalence, inattentiveness and a faulty assumption that government is always working in their best interest, keep hitting that snooze button as, one by one, their rights are revoked and their private lives invaded by bureaucratic snooping.

Wake up, America. Time to smell the coffee. It’s getting bitter.

As I browsed the web these past few weeks, cruising for news that comes from anywhere, everywhere but Fox and its growing ilk, or corporately directed newscasts, I’ve stumbled across quite a few interesting but troubling stories.

The first story that jumps to mind concerns travel beyond U.S. borders, and the apparent governmental monitoring of all the things we bring aboard a plane: the titles of the book(s) we carry, the kinds of medications we pack, our destinations and frequency of travel, who we travel with and how often we share the same flights (we don’t have to be seat mates, just on the same flights). Snoopy. Spooky.

This data, information we aren’t even aware is being collected, is, according to reports stockpiled for FIFTEEN YEARS by some obscure governmental process kept out of the public eye. Just collecting and collating that data seems to ensure lifetime job security for quite a few people.

The Automated Targetting System (ATS, another of the government’s favored three-letter acronyms) has its eye on you, on your cruise plans, your honeymoon in Venice, your theater trip to London, your trip-of-a-lifetime African safari, that jaunt across the border to Montreal or Vancouver, or that otherwise simple business trip to China or France.

In a North Carolina News Observer article, U.S. Monitors Americans’ Travel (9/22/07), under the guise of helping “border officials distinguish potential terrorists from innocent people,” the government is calculating the finite details of your travels almost to the quality and quantity of the air you breathe en route. ATS has been in place for more than a decade, but in 2002 the monitored skyrocketed. They weren’t very effective in 2001.

In the weeks after Sept. 11, no one in Dallas, Texas, even opened my luggage at customs or bothered to read my customs declaration. Peruvian agents took my friend’s tiny bottle of Sugar Cane rum made in the Amazon jungle before we ever boarded a much delayed flight home, and Peruvian and American agents on either end of our flight both missed the 24 inch long, boldly painted, intricately carved blow gun and the kapok tipped arrows (which look like oversized Q-tips) I bought from a Yagua tribesman somewhere in the jungle. My friend’s was even bigger, brighter and bolder. They never looked at hers either. Or the tribal masks we brought home with us. Our carefully packed souvenirs traveled unencumbered and unquestioned for 6,000 miles. We, the overweight, out-of-breath, exhilarated, and exhausted probably looked too “American tourist” to be of concern. Uh-oh. profiling.

But in fact, the time it takes to monitor the members of a senior center’s art tour bound for Holland would be better spent focusing on other security triggers. Unless there are deeper, darker motives for setting this type of surveillance in place, motives that might include an internal expansion of the program. That dovetails neatly with the ongoing assault on civil liberties.

“Civil liberties advocates say the information preserved raises alarms about the government’s ability to intrude into the lives of ordinary people. The millions of travelers whose records are kept are generally unaware of what their records say, and the government has not created an effective mechanism for reviewing the data and correcting errors, activists said.”

– News Observer NC (9/22/07)

ATS administrators now confronted with public ire and activist scrutiny are backpedaling the details of who, what and where they are directing their observations, which means only that after five years of information gathering their dirty little secrets are under a public microscope now. Does that mean the same surveillance is being applied to domestic travel and we just don’t know the depth of that monitoring yet?

Funny, but I didn’t think my copy of Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code, Plato’s The Myth of the Caves, the notes in my journal on the refurbished “architecture as art” of bus stations in New England, or my manuscript on Dementia and caregiving merited that kind of scrutiny.

Are they Zeroxing my letters too? Photocopying my Bad Monkey Bush pin or my precious bright blue Don’t Buy War Toys button? My Friend of Dunbar Cave (ohmygod she might be an Al Gore earth-centric environmentalist!) button? Are they counting the number of high blood pressure pills in my cosmetic bag? Checking the color of my lipstick? The brand of shampoo I use? The chemical content of my 3 oz. ‘For Color Treated Hair’ conditioner? Maybe they need to do a strand test to make sure my Hibiscus Revlon Hydrience hair dye doesn’t pose a toxic threat at 35,000 feet? Somehow, I didn’t think the battered, worn-out snow proof baggage I use on my semi-annual commute to a northern college for a labor-intensive week of writing workshops was all that noteworthy.

Oh, wait! I do go to a very progressive, non-traditional, liberal, free-thinking, outside-the-box school near the permeable Canadian border. The one was anti-war in the 60s, gay pride conscious in the 70s, environmentally conscious in the 80s, pro-civil union in the 90s and vegetarian years before it was fashionable.

Maybe my enrollment there makes me, with my ’slightly the worse for wear’ 57-year-old body, asthma, allergies, bad back, and hypertension a dangerous person; after all, my brain still works and I exercise it regularly by reading, asking questions and paying attention. Maybe, though, I won’t be allowed to fly because I have the ability to get to my gate on time and read the seat numbers without assistance.

On a deeper, more serious level, this kind of governmental scrutiny is akin to intellectual rape, a violation of personal privacy, an intrusion taken to the extreme that should not be tolerated by any of us. And yes, I am taking it personally. So should all of you.

There’s more, though. I all but laughed at the lunatic concept presented in this policy that says two people traveling together once is coincidence; two people traveling on the same flight twice constitutes a “relationship” and such relationships raise questions. Okay, commuters. Each needs a separate flight between JFK and DC, or Boston and New York, or San Francisco to LA for those Monday through Friday commutes to escape the “pairing.” Heaven forbid you should be on the same flight with the same group of people more than once. Husbands and wives — start counting the vacations you take together. You seniors from the local COA running off to Vegas and the slot machines a couple of times a year — you are a conspiracy in the making. You may end up on a no fly list. “What plays in Vegas” may stay in Vegas, but how you get there could become a matter of public record for Homeland Security.

Officials quoted in these stories say that such tracking led in part to the connections of the 9-11 terrorists. Threads in a global terrorist conspiracy. But billions of records are being collected, uploaded and filed into semi-obscurity in a governmental cyber warehouse of infinite proportions.

Remember the visual punch (photo, above) of the first Indiana Jones movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark? The most powerful religious artifact in the world, packed in a wooden crate, rolling down a city of floor to ceiling crates in a governmental warehouse. The new ATS warehouse is configured in cyberspace, but our records are all alive and well there. Somewhere.
The majority of these records reflect ordinary people, with ordinary lives: your daughter and her friends flying off to college, grandma’s winter in Florida, dad’s monthly meetings in Chicago, a young couple’s romantic honeymoon in Venice, the annual family trip to Disneyland. The majority of these records reflect ordinary people, whose expectations as defined by the Bill of Rights are being undermined by a growing number of invasive, intrusive forays into their personal lives.

Yes, there is a pattern and profile to terrorism, but it is not in the luggage, the handbags, the briefcases, the journals, or the books of the average American traveler.

What gets targeted? Well, the usual and obvious suspects: J.D. Salinger, J.K. Rowling. John Steinbeck. Mark Twain. Robert Cormier. And writers such as Maya Angelou – someone out there wants her “Caged Bird” silenced forever. Even revered children’s authors including Maurice Sendak, Madeleine L’Engle and Judy Blume (whose penned scripted three of the top one hundred books).

“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind…

“If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

— On Liberty, John Stuart Mill

The Office for Intellectual Freedom tracks challenges to this literary aspect of our Civil Liberties, and while it currently updating totals from its 2000-2005 records, it offers some surprising and under-reported statistics for the ten year period that covered the 1990’s.

OIF recorded at least 6,364 challenges to shelved books available in America’s schools and libraries. The number of challenges and the number of reasons for those challenges do not match, because works are often challenged on more than one ground. Here’s a rundown of those objections:

• 1,607 were challenges to “sexually explicit” material ;
• 1,427 to material considered to use “offensive language”;
• 1,256 to material considered “unsuited to age group”;
• 842 to material with an “occult theme or promoting the occult or Satanism”;
• 737 to material considered to be “violent”;
• 515 to material with a homosexual theme or “promoting homosexuality”;
• 419 to material “promoting a religious viewpoint.”

Other reasons for challenges included “nudity,” “racism,” “sex education” and “anti-family”. Seventy-one percent of the challenges were to material in schools or school libraries. Another twenty-four percent were to material in public libraries . Sixty percent of the challenges were brought by parents, fifteen percent by patrons, and nine percent by administrators.

One hundred titles are listed here (I’ve read 52), the top 100 books challenged in the decade from 1990-2000 as listed by the Office for Intellectual Freedom.

1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
2. Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
8. Forever by Judy Blume
9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
11. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry
15. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
19. Sex by Madonna
20. Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
21. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
23. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
24. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
28. The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
29. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
30. The Goats by Brock Cole
31. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
32. Blubber by Judy Blume
33. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
34. Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
35. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
36. Final Exit by Derek Humphry
37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
38. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
39. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
40. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
45. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
46. Deenie by Judy Blume
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
48. Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
49. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
50. Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
54. Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
55. Cujo by Stephen King
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
58. Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
61. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
63. Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
64. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
65. Fade by Robert Cormier
66. Guess What? by Mem Fox
67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
68. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
73. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
74. Jack by A.M. Homes
75. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
77. Carrie by Stephen King
78. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
79. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
80. Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
81. Family Secrets by Norma Klein
82. Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
85. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
86. Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
87. Private Parts by Howard Stern
88. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
89. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
90. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
91. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
92. Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
93. Sex Education by Jenny Davis
94. The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
95. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
97. View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
98. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
99. The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

Information and statistics courtesy of the Office for Intellectual Freedom

For more on banned books week see our special Banned Books Week Section