DPL Staff Picks – Favorite Challenged, Restricted, Removed or Banned Books

The compelling diary of a young girl on the brink of maturity as her life draws toward its tragic end – one of the most moving and vivid documents of the Jewish experience.

In this school, the gay kids and the straight kids all get along just fine, the quarterback is a cross-dresser, and the cheerleaders ride Harleys – yet the road to true love is still a strange and winding path, as Paul discovers when he meets the boy of his dreams.

Two high school seniors believe their love to be so strong that it will last forever.

Lisa's Picks:

"Kristina is a good high school student until she starts using meth, also known as crank. Her addiction to crank drives her into a reckless, dangerous life." - Lisa

"Anna was conceived with one purpose in mind, to be a bone marrow donor for her older sister Kate. As a teenager she confronts her identity as an individual and makes a painful decision." - Lisa

"This series is a collection of creepy, spine-tingling short stories for kids." - Lisa

"This funny book written in instant message format tells the story of three high school girls. They deal with boys, beer, school, parents and other typical teen issues." - Lisa

"T.J. Jones is a talented athlete, but he has never wanted to be part of a school team. Then he decides to create a swim team at his school. It’s not an easy thing to do. Their school doesn’t have a pool and the swimmers are a motley group of misfits." - Lisa

"Julie is called Miyax in her Eskimo village. At thirteen she’s forced into a bad marriage. To escape this marriage Miyax runs away and ends up lost on the tundra of Alaska. She befriends a pack of wolves as she struggles to survive." - Lisa

Colleen's Picks:

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.

Rescued from the outrageous neglect of his aunt and uncle, a young boy with a great destiny proves his worth while attending Hogwarts School for Wizards and Witches.

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers.

A little boy's dream-fantasy in which he helps three fat bakers get milk for their cake batter.

Becker's Picks:

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.

Liza tries to put aside her feelings for Annie after the disaster at Foster Academy, but eventually she allows love to triumph over the ignorance of others.

One stormy night a strange visitor comes to the Murry house and beckons Meg, her brother Charles and their friend Calvin O'Keefe on a most dangerous and fantastic journey – a journey that will threaten their lives and our universe.

A high school freshman discovers the devastating consequences of refusing to join in the school's annual fund raising drive and arousing the wrath of the school bullies.

Gwen's Picks:

Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie is navigating through the strange worlds of love, drugs, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and dealing with the loss of a good friend and his favorite aunt.

A young boy and his Norwegian grandmother, who is an expert on witches, together foil a witches' plot to destroy the world's children by turning them into mice.

A photograph of a missing girl on a milk carton leads Janie on a search for her real identity.

A monumental classic considered by many to be not only the greatest love story ever written, but also the greatest Civil War saga.

Set in the 1930s, this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel traces the rise and fall of demagogue Willie Stark, a fictional character based on the real-life Huey Long of Louisiana.

Kristi's Picks:

The story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love–love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.

As he reconstructs the 1959 murder of a Kansas farm family and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, Capote generates suspense and empathy.

Feeling like she does not fit in with the other members of her family, who are all thin, brilliant and good-looking, fifteen-year-old Virginia tries to deal with her self-image, her first physical relationship and her disillusionment with some of the people closest to her.

Tara's Picks:

"Favorite Banned Book for the Silliest Reason. Charlie in France, Walter in Germany, Holger in Denmark and Willy in Norway. Waldo can also be found in Japan. In Israel, Waldo got renamed as Effy. Banned for having a picture of a topless mermaid." -Tara

"Banned for being "too negative" this sci-fi classic is a great example of why you don't let the government do the thinking for you!" -Tara

"What happens when you mix a bunch of kids with Egyptology, murder and LOTS of imagination? A mystery fit for the pharaohs!" -Tara

"This adaptation of Beowulf, from the point of view of "the monster," is at times violent, heroic and sad." -Tara

Elizabeth's Picks:

Nowadays firemen start fires. Fireman Guy Montag loved to rush to a fire and watch books burn up. Then he met a seventeen-year old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid and a professor who told him of a future where people could think. And Guy Montag knew what he had to do....

This timeless classic is told through the voice of a young girl named Scout as she observes her neighborhood and family embroiled in a black man's battle for justice, defended by her father, an attorney.

Carol's Picks:

Through a series of questions to which the reader must answer yes or no, the personality and occupation of a lady called Daisy O'Grady are revealed.

An eleven-year-old foster child tries to cope with her longings and fears as she schemes against everyone who tries to be friendly.

Angela's Picks:

Fourteen-year-old Georgia continues her diary in which she records her misadventures trying to reclaim the attention of seventeen-year-old Robbie, while coping with her friends, family and dog-like cat Angus at the same time.

Holden, 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.

Jon Stewart and The Daily Show writing staff offer their insights into our unique system of government, dissecting its institutions, explaining its history and processes, and exploring the reasons why concepts like one man, one vote, government by the people and every vote counts have become such popular urban myths.

In 1967, after a session with a doctor she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi to McLean Hospital. She spent most of the next two years on the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric hospital that was as renowned for its famous clientele - Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles were among its patients - as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its rare sanctuary.

Shamus's Picks:

In depression-era California, two migrant workers dream of better days on a spread of their own until an act of unintentional violence leads to tragic consequences.

Set during the Great Depression, it traces the migration of an Oklahoma Dust Bowl family to California and their subsequent hardships as migrant farm workers.

The struggle between a formidable nurse on a mental ward and an inmate who refuses to surrender to her soul-destroying methods.

Midge's Picks:

The bluest eye is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. A black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others, who 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.

Overflowing with humor, action, and that world-famous cheesy animation technique, Flip-O-Rama, this collection will make kids laugh until soda comes out their noses. Have you read your UNDERPANTS today?

Set in a World War II American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, this is the story of John Yossarian, who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. Yossarian is also trying to decode the meaning of Catch-22, a mysterious regulation that proves that insane people are really the sanest, while the supposedly sensible people are the true madmen.

Centering on the  infamous fire-bombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.

Kiko's Picks:

"The sweet story of two male penguins who try to parent a rock until a zookeeper gives them a real egg... Based on a true story, this book illustrates the beauty and strength of all family bonds. Challenged for issues of homosexuality." -Kiko

"An African American man's search for himself takes him through the South and into Harlem where he struggles with justice, politics and race and love. Challenged for profanity and images of violence and sexuality." -Kiko

"This book is so real and moving, it's as if I knew the characters intimately, in person. I can still remember the emotions I felt when I read it many years ago. Challenged for language and sexual explicitness." -Kiko

Ann's Picks

Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out of his Harlem high school, enlists in the Army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year on active duty in Vietnam.

As with all Crutcher's work, these are stories about athletes and yet they are not sports stories. They are tales of love and death, bigotry and heroism, of real people doing their best even when that best isn't very good.

This timeless classic is told through the voice of a young girl named Scout as she observes her neighborhood and family embroiled in a black man's battle for justice, defended by her father, an attorney.

Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.

Emilia's Picks:

Tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of a mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, alive with unforgettable men and women, and with a truth and understanding that strike the soul.

Here is the magnificent saga of proud and passionate men and women and the turbulent times through which they suffer and triumph. They are the Truebas. Theirs is a world you will not want to leave, and one you will not forget.

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

Story of Valjean, the ex-convict who rises against all odds from galley slave to mayor, and the fanatical police inspector who dedicates his life to recapturing Valjean.

A classic depiction of exile, estrangement, paralysis, and the disintegration of a society, Ulysses records the events of one average day, June 16, 1904, in the lives of three central figures.

Inspired by transcendentalism, Whitman's immortal collection includes some of the greatest poems of modern times, including his masterpiece "Song of Myself." Shattering standard conventions of symbolism and allegory, it stands as an unabashed celebration of body and nature.

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.

The compelling diary of a young girl on the brink of maturity as her life draws toward its tragic end – one of the most moving and vivid documents of the Jewish experience.

A political fable concerning a group of barnyard animals who overthrow and chase off their exploitative human masters and set up an egalitarian society of their own. Eventually the animals' intelligent and power-loving leaders, the pigs, subvert the revolution and form a dictatorship even more oppressive and heartless than that of their former human masters.

The story of Lady Constance Chatterley, for years a loyal wife to her paralyzed husband, until Mellors, the gamekeeper on their estate, awakens her mind and body to love.

The story of American slavery and Uncle Tom, an African-American man who never lost his dignity under the most inhumane circumstances.

Burdened with the dark, dangerous, and seemingly impossible task of locating and destroying Voldermort's remaining Horcruxes, Harry, feeling alone and uncertain about his future, struggles to find the inner strength he needs to follow the path set out before him.

Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, and one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote of La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain.

Flaubert draws a deeply-felt but sympathetic portrait of a woman who, having married a country doctor and found herself unhappy with a rural, genteel existence, longs for love and excitement. Her aspirations and her desires lead her into a tragic downward spiral.