- History & Culture
- Explainer
The history of book bans—and their changing targets—in the U.S.
Recent years have seen a record-breaking number of attempts to ban books. Here's how book banning emerged—and how it turned school libraries into battlegrounds.
Mark Twain. Harriet Beecher Stowe. William Shakespeare. These names share something more than a legacy of classic literature and a place on school curriculums: They’re just some of the many authors whose work has been banned from classrooms over the years for content deemed controversial, obscene, or otherwise objectionable by authorities.
Judy Blume is on this esteemed list. Her 1970 best seller Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret—recently adapted for film for the first time—has been challenged in schools across the United States for its portrayal of female puberty and religion.
Even Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl has been targeted for censorship—not for its depiction of a
