Suggested Titles From the ALA's Banned & Challenged Classics List

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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"Self-made millionaire Jay Gatsby epitomizes the decadence of the 1920s Jazz Age in this tale of mobility and decline, told with detached curiosity by his neighbor and confidant Nick Carraway."

Call Number: F FITZGERA
Library Location: http://sflib1.sfpl.org/record=b1349927~S1

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

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"The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it."

Call Numbers: F SALINGER; TEEN F SALINGER
Library Location: sflib1.sfpl.org/record=b1287636~S1

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

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"The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic. Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos."

Call Numbers: F LEE HARP; TEEN F LEE
Library Location: http://sflib1.sfpl.org/record=b1157784~S1

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

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Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self.

Call Number: F WALKER A; TEEN F WALK
Library Location: http://sflib1.sfpl.org/record=b2108307~S1

Beloved by Toni Morrison

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"The story of the escaped slave Sethe and the past that literally and figuratively haunts her is rightfully still vivid, and, in Morrison's controlled reading, the words and images linger powerfully in our mind's eye. The novel was both well researched and imaginatively constructed to show the horrors and costs of both slavery and freedom for these characters who are by turns unforgettable, tragic, and mystical."

Call Numbers: F MORRISON; TEEN F MORRISO; TEEN F MORR
Library Location: http://sflib1.sfpl.org/record=b1186971~S1

The Lord of the Flies by William Golding

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" Lord of the Flies is an adventure tale in its purest form, a thrilling and elegantly told account of a group of British schoolboys marooned on a tropical island. Alone in a world of uncharted possibilities, devoid of adult supervision or rules, the boys begin to forge their own society, their own rules, their own rituals. With this seemingly romantic premise, through the seemingly innocent acts of children, Golding exposes the duality of human nature itself—the dark, eternal divide between order and chaos, intellect and instinct, structure and savagery."

Call Numbers: F GOLDING; TEEN F GOLD
Library Location: http://sflib1.sfpl.org/record=b1106997~S1


1984 by George Orwell

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"1984presents a startling and haunting vision of the world, so powerful that it is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the power of this novel, its hold on the imaginations of multiple generations of readers, or the resiliency of its admonitions—a legacy that seems only to grow with the passage of time."

Call Numbers: F ORWELL G; TEEN F ORWE
Library Location: sflib1.sfpl.org/record=b1199830~S1

Lolita by Vladamir Nabokov

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Awe and exhiliration--along with heartbreak and mordant wit--abound inLolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze.Lolitais also 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.


Call Number: F NABOKOV
Library Location: sflib1.sfpl.org/record=b1346802~S1

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

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The story of the friendship of Lenny and George, two migrant farm workers, traveling and working in California during the Depression.

Call Numbers: F STEINBECK; TEEN F STEI
Library Location: http://sflib1.sfpl.org/record=b1556616~S1

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

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At the heart ofCatch-22resides the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero endlessly inventive in his schemes to save his skin from the horrible chances of war. His efforts are perfectly understandable because as he furiously scrambles, thousands of people he hasn't even met are trying to kill him. His problem is Colonel Cathcart, who keeps raising the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions that he is committed to flying, he is trapped by the Great Loyalty Oath Crusade, the hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule from which the book takes its title: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes the necessary formal request to be relieved of such missions, the very act of making the request proves that he is sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.

Call Numbers: F HELLER J; TEEN F HELL
Library Location: http://sflib1.sfpl.org/record=b1630672~S1

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

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Aldous Huxley's tour de force, Brave New World is a darkly satiric vision of a "utopian" future where humans are genetically bred and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively serve a ruling order. A powerful work of speculative fiction that has enthralled and terrified readers for generations, it remains remarkably relevant to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying entertainment.

Call Numbers: F HUXLEY A 2006
Library Location: http://sflib1.sfpl.org/record=b2237758~S1


Don't take our word for it!
To find the complete list of banned or challenged classics see the ALA website:http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/frequently
challenged/challengedclassics/reasonsbanned/index.cfm


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