Most Frequently Challenged Book? It's Perfectly Normal
-- Library Journal, 3/16/2006
Robie H. Harris's It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health was the most frequently challenged book last year, reports the American Library Association (ALA) in its annual list of most frequently challenged books. Harris had another book in the top ten as well. The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom last year received a total of 405 challenges—a formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness.
The “10 Most Challenged Books of 2005” include:
- It's Perfectly Normal for homosexuality, nudity, sex education, religious viewpoint, abortion, and being unsuited to age group;
- Forever by Judy Blume for sexual content and offensive language;
- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger for sexual content, offensive language, and being unsuited to age group;
- The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier for sexual content and offensive language;
- Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher for racism and offensive language;
- Detour for Emmy by Marilyn Reynolds for sexual content;
- What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones for sexual content and being unsuited to age group;
- Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey for anti-family content, being unsuited to age group, and violence;
- Crazy Lady! by Jane Leslie Conly for offensive language; and
- It's So Amazing! A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families by Robie H. Harris for sex education and sexual content.
Most of the challenges include books aimed at juveniles. ALA pointed out that some books on previous lists, including John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, were not on this year’s list.
