Recently Banned and Challenged Books--2008 Part 2

Explore the controversial 2008 banned and challenged books list—Part 2. Discover the titles that sparked debates and censorship attempts in schools and libraries nationwide.

My Sister's Keeper Cover
Book

My Sister's Keeper

by Jodi Picoult

Written with grace, wisdom, and sensitivity, this novel is about a teen who was conceived as a bone marrow match for her sister Kate, and what happens when she begins to question who she really is.
Girl, Interrupted Cover
Book

Girl, Interrupted

by Susanna Kaysen

30th ANNIVERSARY EDITION • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital. Her memoir of the next two years is a "poignant, honest ... triumphantly funny ... and heartbreaking story" (The New York Times Book Review). WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR The ward for teenage girls in the McLean psychiatric hospital was as renowned for its famous clientele—Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles—as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary. Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Cover
Book

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

by Sherman Alexie

Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower Cover
Book

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

by Stephen Chbosky

Read the cult-favorite coming of age story that takes a sometimes heartbreaking, often hysterical, and always honest look at high school in all its glory. Now a major motion picture starring Logan Lerman and Emma Watson, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a funny, touching, and haunting modern classic. The critically acclaimed debut novel from Stephen Chbosky, Perks follows observant “wallflower” Charlie as he charts a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, and new friends. Sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Devastating loss, young love, and life on the fringes. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie must learn to navigate those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up. A years-long #1 New York Times bestseller, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults and Best Book for Reluctant Readers, and with millions of copies in print, this novel for teen readers (or “wallflowers” of more-advanced age) will make you laugh, cry, and perhaps feel nostalgic for those moments when you, too, tiptoed onto the dance floor of life.
Bless Me, Ultima Cover
Book

Bless Me, Ultima

 

Chronicles the story of an alienated New Mexico boy who seeks an answer to his questions about life in his relationship with Ultima, a magical healer, in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the classic novel, which comes complete with a special reading group guide. Reprint.
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The Kite Runner Cover
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The Kite Runner

by Khaled Hosseini

Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant's son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy through the atrocities of the present day.
Beloved Cover
Book

Beloved

by Toni Morrison

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A spellbinding novel that transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. With a new afterword by the author. This "brutally powerful, mesmerizing story” (People) is an unflinchingly look into the abyss of slavery, from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner. Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. “A masterwork.... Wonderful.... I can’t imagine American literature without it.” —John Leonard, Los Angeles Times
The Color Purple Cover
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The Color Purple

by Alice Walker

Set in the period between the world wars, this novel tells of two sisters, their trials, and their survival.
The Catcher in the Rye Cover
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The Catcher in the Rye

by J.D. Salinger

J.D. Salinger's classic of adolescent angst is now available for the first time in trade paperback. Holden Caulfield, knowing he is to be expelled from school, decides to leave early. He spends three days in New York City and tells the story of what he did and suffered there.
The Bluest Eye Cover
Book

The Bluest Eye

by Toni Morrison

From Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison comes the story of a young black girl who longs to be like the blond, blue-eyed children that America loves-a novel "so charged with pain and wonder that it becomes poetry" (The New York Times).
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Ttyl Cover
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Ttyl

 

No summary available.
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The Twilight Saga Collection Cover
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The Twilight Saga Collection

 

No summary available.
Nineteen Minutes Cover
Book

Nineteen Minutes

by Jodi Picoult

The daughter of a judge in a New Hampshire school shooting case witnessed the events, but cannot remember the last several minutes of the attack.
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