13 Banned YA Books That Sparked Fierce Debate
This young adult banned books list explores the most frequently challenged works of YA fiction and nonfiction, and unpacks the real reasons behind each ban, drawing on reporting from the American Library Association (ALA), PEN America and other verified sources.
It’s fascinating to look at banned young adult books and discover exactly why they rattled parents, school boards and censors. In an age of culture wars and curriculum reviews, they are more of a hot topic than ever.
If you’re curious about banned YA books, this guide is a good place to start, especially for Banned Books Week.
- 1. The Chocolate War – Robert Cormier (1974)
- 2. Speak – Laurie Halse Anderson (1999)
- 3. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian – Sherman Alexie (2007)
- 50 States Reading Journal
- 4. Thirteen Reasons Why – Jay Asher (2007)
- 5. The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky (1999)
- 6. Looking for Alaska – John Green (2005)
- 7. This Book Is Gay – Juno Dawson (2014)
- 8. Gender Queer: A Memoir – Maia Kobabe (2019)
- 9. The Hate U Give – Angie Thomas (2017)
- 10. All American Boys – Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely (2015)
- 11. All Boys Aren’t Blue – George M. Johnson (2020)
- 12. Lawn Boy – Jonathan Evison (2018)
- 13. Out of Darkness – Ashley Hope Pérez (2015)
- Final Thoughts on Banned YA Books
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links and as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This means I earn a small commission if you choose to make a purchase using a link, but at no cost to you. I’ve included Amazon links to each recommended book as well as Everand, Spotify, and Bookshop.org (US and UK) where available.
A REBEL’S READING CHALLENGE
Banned Books Journal
Discover 100 banned books from around the world, then read them yourself and write down your thoughts.
1. The Chocolate War – Robert Cormier (1974)
Jerry Renault, a freshman at a strict Catholic boys’ school, refuses to take part in the school’s mandatory chocolate sale, and pays a brutal price for standing his ground against peer pressure, bullying and institutional corruption.
The novel is considered one of the founding texts of the modern YA genre for its unflinching, morally ambiguous ending.
Why it Was Banned
The novel was a fixture of the ALA’s lists of most challenged books throughout the 1990s and 2000s, even climbing to the number one spot decades after publication.
Critics have objected to its violence, sexual references, and what some viewed as a bleak, subversive message about authority.
About the Author
Robert Cormier (1925–2000) was an American journalist and novelist whose YA fiction was known for rejecting neat, comforting endings in favour of moral complexity.
2. Speak – Laurie Halse Anderson (1999)
Melinda Sordino stops speaking after being raped at a party the summer before starting high school. Told in fragmented, first-person vignettes, the novel follows her slow journey towards finding her voice again.
I read this as a teen and it has really stuck with me. Even now, there are certain scenes I can recall vividly. Though I may not have understood the impact at the time, this book really shaped how I understood rape, consent and how disempowering it can be to lose your voice.
Why it Was Banned
Speak has appeared on the ALA’s list of most challenged books almost every year since its release, and was banned in fourteen public school districts in Iowa in a single wave of removals under a 2023 state law restricting books with sexual content.
Objectors have called it “soft pornography” and accused it of glorifying underage drinking, though its defenders point out that the novel is about the aftermath of sexual assault, not a celebration of it.
About the Author
Laurie Halse Anderson (born 1961) is an American writer known for tackling trauma and mental health in her YA fiction, drawing in part on her own experience of sexual assault as a teenager, which she wrote about decades later in her memoir Shout.
3. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian – Sherman Alexie (2007)
Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation, transfers to a nearly all-white farm town school in search of a better future, and must navigate two worlds that pull him in opposite directions.
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Learn More About GenkiWhy it Was Banned
The National Book Award-winning novel has repeatedly been pulled from school reading lists for its references to masturbation, profanity and depictions of poverty and alcoholism on the reservation.
More recent challenges have also cited allegations of misconduct made against the author himself.
About the Author
Sherman Alexie (born 1966) is a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene American writer and filmmaker whose work often explores Native American identity and life on and off the reservation.
Read Next: For more books by First Nations writers, take a look at this list of books by Native American authors, or consider doing a USA Reading Challenge that includes Native groups.
read around the USA
50 States Reading Journal
Includes overseas territories and Native American writers.
4. Thirteen Reasons Why – Jay Asher (2007)
Clay Jensen receives a set of cassette tapes recorded by his classmate Hannah Baker before she took her own life, each one explaining a reason that led to her death, and his own place among them.
Why it Was Banned
The novel has ranked among the ALA’s most challenged titles for over a decade, cited for its depiction of suicide, sexual assault and underage drinking, and for concerns about “suicide contagion” among vulnerable teenage readers.
Several school districts pulled the book from shelves specifically after local teen suicides, out of fear the timing made it too sensitive to keep in circulation.
About the Author
Jay Asher (born 1975) is an American author who has said he was inspired to write the novel after a relative attempted suicide as a teenager.
5. The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky (1999)
Told through a series of letters, introverted freshman Charlie navigates his first year of high school, new friendships, first love, and memories of childhood trauma he’s only beginning to understand.
Why it Was Banned
The novel has spent a quarter-century near the top of the ALA’s most-challenged lists, with objectors citing its depictions of teenage sexuality, drug and alcohol use, and references to child sexual abuse and suicide.
In 2024, Utah instituted a statewide school ban on the novel.
About the Author
Stephen Chbosky (born 1970) is an American novelist, screenwriter and director who also wrote and directed the 2012 film adaptation of his own novel.
6. Looking for Alaska – John Green (2005)
Miles “Pudge” Halter transfers to a boarding school in search of what the poet Rabelais called “the Great Perhaps,” and falls for the magnetic, self-destructive Alaska Young, whose sudden death forces him to confront grief and meaning.
Why it Was Banned
Looking for Alaska has repeatedly topped the ALA’s annual most-challenged lists, most often for a scene depicting oral sex, along with references to underage drinking and smoking.
More recent challenges have also flagged its LGBTQ+ content.
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Claim the Airalo DiscountAbout the Author
John Green (born 1977) is an American author and YouTuber whose YA novels frequently explore mortality, philosophy and adolescence.
7. This Book Is Gay – Juno Dawson (2014)
Part memoir, part practical guide, this nonfiction handbook covers coming out, dating, sex and relationships for LGBTQ+ teenagers, written by a former sex-education teacher who wished a book like it had existed when she was young.
Why it Was Banned
Objectors have cited its frank sex-education content and LGBTQ+ themes; the publisher and author have both stressed the book is explicitly marketed as being for teenagers, not younger children.
About the Author
Juno Dawson is a British author and former secondary school teacher whose YA fiction and nonfiction focus heavily on gender, sexuality and identity.
Read Next: I also included this book and the book below in Banned Books by Queer Writers That Refused to Stay Silent.
8. Gender Queer: A Memoir – Maia Kobabe (2019)
This autobiographical graphic novel follows Kobabe’s own journey to understanding eir identity as nonbinary and asexual, from childhood confusion through to acceptance, using the comic form to depict experiences many readers say they’d never seen represented before.
Why it Was Banned
Gender Queer has topped the ALA’s list of most challenged books for two consecutive years, and was the single most banned book in American school districts between mid-2021 and the end of 2022, according to PEN America.
Challenges centre on its depictions of sex and its LGBTQ+ content, which some have labelled pornographic; the book carries an 18+ rating from its own publisher.
About the Author
Maia Kobabe is an American cartoonist and author who identifies as nonbinary and uses e/em/eir pronouns.
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Claim Offer9. The Hate U Give – Angie Thomas (2017)
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter witnesses a police officer fatally shoot her unarmed childhood friend Khalil, and must find her voice amid grief, media scrutiny and pressure from both her community and the police.
I listened to this on audiobook during the pandemic, not knowing that it was a YA book. I found the narrating voice a little annoying, but reading this as an adult, the story and message is still powerful.
Why it Was Banned
Despite topping the New York Times bestseller list for weeks, the novel was banned outright by a Texas school district within months of publication, on the grounds that it was “pervasively vulgar,” before public pressure and a student-led petition forced its reinstatement, according to Banned Books Week.
It has continued to face challenges for profanity and for being perceived as promoting an “anti-police message.”
About the Author
Angie Thomas (born 1988) is an American author from Jackson, Mississippi, who has said Tupac Shakur’s music was a key creative inspiration for the novel’s title and themes.
10. All American Boys – Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely (2015)
Told from two alternating perspectives, the novel follows Rashad, a Black teenager wrongly accused of theft and beaten by a police officer, and Quinn, his white classmate who witnesses the assault and must decide whether to speak up.
Read Next: This book also appears in my list of Banned Books by Queer Writers.
Why it Was Banned
Challenges most often cite profanity, drug and alcohol references, as well as its perceived anti-police stance.
The authors — one Black, one white — have said the book was never intended as anti-police, but as an honest depiction of how race shapes very different experiences of the same encounter.
About the Authors
Jason Reynolds (born 1983) and Brendan Kiely (born 1982) are American YA authors who began collaborating on the novel after discussing their differing personal experiences with law enforcement.
11. All Boys Aren’t Blue – George M. Johnson (2020)
Part memoir, part manifesto, this collection of essays traces Johnson’s coming of age as a queer Black man, addressing family, masculinity, sexuality and race with unusual candour for a book aimed at teenagers.
Why it Was Banned
The book rose to the second most challenged title in America in 2022, with objections centring on its LGBTQ+ content and sexually explicit passages.
About the Author
George M. Johnson is an American journalist and author whose writing focuses on Black, queer identity and lived experience.
12. Lawn Boy – Jonathan Evison (2018)
Mike Muñoz, a young Mexican-American man stuck in a string of dead-end landscaping jobs, wrestles with class, ambition and a buried memory from his childhood as he tries to work out what he actually wants from life.
Why it Was Banned
Lawn Boy placed second on the ALA’s list of most challenged books in 2021, largely over a brief passage recalling a childhood incident between two young boys, which objectors characterised as depicting child sexual abuse.
The novel was pulled from several school libraries and, in some cases, from public library shelves entirely.
About the Author
Jonathan Evison (born 1968) is an American novelist whose adult fiction crossed over into YA reading lists, drawing him unexpectedly into the centre of the book-banning debate.
13. Out of Darkness – Ashley Hope Pérez (2015)
Set against the real 1937 New London school explosion in Texas, the novel follows a forbidden romance between a Mexican-American girl and a Black boy in the segregated Jim Crow South.
Why it Was Banned
The novel appeared on the ALA’s top ten most challenged list for 2021, cited for providing sex education, LGBTQIA+ content and for depicting sexual abuse.
Its defenders argue the difficult scenes are inseparable from its unflinching portrayal of historical racism and violence.
About the Author
Ashley Hope Pérez is an American novelist and professor whose historical YA fiction often centres on race, class and forbidden relationships in the American South.
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Final Thoughts on Banned YA Books
Each of these banned young adult novels has weathered attempts to keep it off shelves, and many have found an even wider readership as a result.
Whether you want to read banned books out of curiosity, solidarity, or simple stubbornness, this list is a solid starting point, and a reminder of how much debate a book can provoke.
Did I miss one of your favourite banned YA books? Let me know in the comments below.
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Fantastic Books & Where to Find Them
For more of what to read where, check out my full Travel Books Guide, filled with book recommendations for different destinations, the most beautiful bookstores around the world, tips on how to get the best deals on audiobooks and e-books, as well as more literary travel.
Travel Essentials
Here are the websites and services I personally use and recommend.
FLIGHTS: The best deals can be found on Skyscanner, Google Flights and Kiwi (learn more about Kiwi travel hacking here).
TRAVEL INSURANCE: I recommend World Nomads for travel insurance because you can purchase once you’re already overseas and you can easily extend your policy. For digital nomads, I recommend and personally use Genki (learn more about Genki digital nomad health insurance here).
E-SIM: For travel in Europe, I use an e-sim with GoMobile, which is a provider based in Malta, but you need to be there to set it up.
ACCOMMODATION: I use Booking.com for hotels and Airbnb for apartments. For Colivings, I usually book privately, but Coliving.com is a good place to start.
THINGS TO DO: I use Viator or Get Your Guide for booking day trips, city tours and other activities, though I often check reviews on TripAdvisor too.
Amy Poulton
I’m Amy, an explorer of real and fictional worlds. A word huntress. An escape artist. A page traveller.
I started this blog in 2015 when I was living as an expat in Hong Kong, as a way to keep in touch with friends and family back home. Later, I wrote about my backpacking adventures in Southeast Asia and Mexico, as well as my other experiences living overseas in Italy and Thailand.
Two years ago, I started my next chapter as a digital nomad and travelling cat mom. And of course, I’ve been journeying through books all that time, too.
Now I host Nomad Book Club and literary reading retreats, and offer trip planning services.
Learn more about me and the Page Traveller blog here.