As books are challenged or restricted all over the United States and court cases continue to weigh access to literacy, School Library Journal and NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) continue to champion works in the literary canon that have long been taught in classrooms.

Many of these titles are YA classics, such as That Was Then, This Is Now, a companion to S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, itself a title continually on banned books lists. In Virginia, it was removed from a school district because it has “graphic language and subject matter” and deals with “broken homes.”

Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, adapted for a 2009 film starring Saoirse Ronan, was challenged because a parent considered it “pornographic.” The novel follows the ghost of a young teen who was kidnapped and murdered. Another book cited for references to sexual activity, kidnapping, and cults was Caroline B. Cooney’s The Face on the Milk Carton, the first in a five-book series about a girl who sees her own face in a photo of a missing child.

Robert Cormier’s books, most notably The Chocolate War, have consistently appeared on challenged and banned books lists. The Margaret A. Edwards Award recipient’s book We All Fall Down was also restricted in middle and high schools in Texas and Florida over concerns about the book’s content and language.

These titles and authors have been widely recognized by educators and librarians. For those looking for reasons to support the continued placement of these long-beloved books in libraries, we present these reviews to help keep the books in circulation.
 

The NCTE reviews were adapted from the NCTE Rationale Database.

See more from the Defending the Canon project