In celebration of Banned Book Week, I’ve decided to re-read my favorite childhood book, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume. I was nine or ten when I read it for the first time and it changed my life. Really. Here’s a list of Top Banned/Challenged Books -- the ones I’ve read are in bold: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee The Color Purple by Alice Walker Ulysses by James Joyce Beloved by Toni Morrison The Lord of the Flies by William Golding 1984 by George Orwell Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Animal Farm by George Orwell The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell Native Son by Richard Wright One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway The Call of the Wild by Jack London Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien The Jungle by Upton Sinclair Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess The Awakening by Kate Chopin In Cold Blood by Truman Capote The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie Sophie's Choice by William Styron Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut A Separate Peace by John Knowles Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser Rabbit, Run by John Updike Some of my favorites: Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson Twilight by Stephenie Meyer Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling For more info: http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/bannedbooksweek/index.cfm
