Talk:List of most commonly challenged books in the United States

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Correlation[edit]

For a good reading list you can go to this kind of list. Isn't it funny how there's a positive correlation between book quality and the desire to ban the book? Have there been any formal studies on this?

This is a really interesting question - I'd like to see some of the reasons books were challenged, e.g. who tried to ban James and the Giant Peach!? --Dyefade (talk) 14:52, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Read this article, then. Scariness; "communistic"; hidden sexual or drug implications; encouraging disobedience; etc. --Orange Mike | Talk 20:55, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sources[edit]

I agree with the above editor on the quality of the books in the list! However while some effort has been made to source the claim "most commonly challenged" to ALA or whatever, it would be a good move to add proper sources to this list, so that we can evaluated the kind of challenge made, its extent, and where and when it was reported. --Tony Sidaway 22:51, 5 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think all of these are legit. Where's Waldo??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.128.82.120 (talk) 00:38, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In one Where's Waldo where he's hiding on the beach theres a woman tanning on her front with her bikini top undone. A kid had stuck an ice cream cone in the small of her back and she arches back exposing herself. I remember seeing a news report about it when the book came out. --Zijderveld (talk) 08:45, 14 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Filter Tackles[edit]

Hey, I don't do a lot of wiki editing, but I kinda had an idea that, in my opinion may or may not increase usability. I was trying to use the little tackles on the Source column to filter the list to order the items by (presumably) the order they appear in the ALA challenge list, but because of the way computers alphabetize numbers instead of sorting, you get a list that goes kinda like: 100, 10, 11, 12 ... 19, 1, 20 ... 98, 99, 9 and so forth, where, of course, I would like a list in the order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ... 97, 98, 99, 100. Is there an easy way to either a) zero pad these numbers so they alphabetize better or b) have the "sort" work on the numerical values rather than the string representing said numerical values? I can only imagine a fix like this might be useful on other extensive list that someone may be interested in sorting, you know? Thanks for giving this post any consideration; I would fix it myself, except I dunno if it would upset people. 134.134.136.3 (talk) 17:48, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I think a numerical list would be much more functional than an alphabetized list. Singthenightsky (talk) 23:47, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

just went through and did that - sorting the source column is now useful. Felixjones (talk) 00:37, 21 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

New List[edit]

The 2000-2007 list is out ALA Banned Book List 2000-2007 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nice or in evil (talk • contribs) 20:11, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm working on getting the new list in here, so i've eliminated the numbers right now. If it has a number, than it is the 00-07 list Nice or in evil (talk) 21:00, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Super Diaper Baby[edit]

I just happened to check in on this article and I'm not entirely sure The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby is one of the most-commonly challenged books in the US. Can anyone else say something about this? ---216.221.200.193 (talk) 22:26, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Captain Underpants books are constantly being challenged by a certain type of over-fastidious neo-Victorian parent. --Orange Mike | Talk 22:29, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Agree. --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling (talk) 22:32, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Justine[edit]

I think 'Justine' by Marquis De Sade should definitely be on the list as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.159.244.80 (talk) 19:21, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why on earth would we do that? It is nothing of the sort. --Orange Mike | Talk 17:39, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Reason[edit]

There should be a reason given for why the book was challenged, as many of the books (i.e. Cujo and An American Tragedy) provide no reason for why the book is challenged in the first place, and someone looking for a quick reason wouldn't want to have to read the full plot summary and then hypothesize. Brambleberry of RiverClan ^{Mew ♠ Tail} 01:13, 24 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

???????????[edit]

Why is the Bible not here? -WAZZUP Guardian — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:CE6D:6FB0:C869:6EEA:F050:477B (talk) 22:11, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Because it isn't one of the most commonly challenged books in the United States. --Orange Mike | Talk 13:45, 10 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Except that it is. ----> Top Ten for 2015: #6. 71.55.137.230 (talk) 05:37, 20 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why Alphabetic order?[edit]

I was directed to this article by a link stating that "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the fifth most challenged book in the US". If there is a definitive ranked list of books challenged most in the US, why is this article in Alphabetic order? Hentheden (talk) 15:21, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. A sortable table with rank would be convenient. GregorB (talk) 23:07, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Rewrite[edit]

I completely rebuilt the list from scratch based on the sources linked in the article. Any books that are not covered by the citations found in the column headers are cited individually next to their title. A lot more books were added and I think only 2 or so were removed as I couldn't immediately find references to support their inclusion on the list (namely The Exorcist and Jay's Journal).

I also added publication year and each book's rank in the ALA's top 100 lists. The table is also now sortable so you can see those top 100 lists in order.

I also reworked the intro. My reasoning behind including the pictures that I did was that Blume represents the most frequently appearing author on the list, Rowling represents the most current and most challenged work, and Twain represents the oldest works. They also represent different reasonings: sexuality, religion, and racism.

Yep. Bruto (talk) 10:56, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Adding a column to the table for 2010-2019?[edit]

I tried to use VisEd to insert a column to update this table from the new list but it broke the table. Can anyone figure out how to do that without having to go in manually and insert the column one by one? —valereee (talk) 13:34, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I second this. I have tried adding 2010-2019 in on three separate occasions, but each time, I get the same error: Error contacting the Parsoid/RESTBase server (HTTP 504). Significa liberdade (talk) 01:35, 4 May, 2021 (UTC)

Dr. Seuss[edit]

Some Dr. Seuss books are being challenged and banned by some in the USA. Certainly this deserves mention! Pete unseth (talk) 17:10, 4 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This list is compiled based on data collected by the American Library Association. If the Dr. Seuss books rank high enough in banned and challenged books, they'll land on the list. Significa liberdade (talk) 01:35, 4 May, 2021 (UTC)

The fuss over the Dr. Seuss books is because the publisher decided to censor some of the titles, not because there was a massive amount of complaints. There were, however plenty of people misunderstanding this and erroneously blaming one group or another for censorship. Titaniumlegs (talk) 17:54, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]