I’ve complained about “Banned” Books Week many times already, most recently in 2023:
The plain fact is that librarians, both school and public, have limited resources, so they use their substantial powers of intelligence and discretion to pursue donations and purchases that actually serve their readers — in other words, they massively discriminate, ignoring 99.99% of all books that have ever been published in favor of the 0.01% of books which, in their opinions as library professionals, serve the goals of the public or school library where they work.
If they did this with their own private money, there is nothing the public could do if it decided that, sometimes, the librarians picked the wrong books. But, of course, public and school libraries don’t rely exclusively on private funding; they rely, in very large part, on the income we give them through taxation. In a normal, healthy, functioning democracy, our involvement in keeping libraries alive would give us some say in what libraries do with the money we give them. “Banned Books Week” is largely designed to lock us out of the process, so that librarians can continue to discriminate against and in favor of whatever books suit their judgement, without taking ours into consideration.
Nevertheless, it persisted.
It is 2025 and, alas, the ALA and its alphabet coalition have once again announced that this week is “Banned Books Week.”
I have decided, then, to join the fun. The graphic at the top of this post includes nine books that have been banned1 from bookshelves, publishers, classrooms, or contests in the United States—yet, very mysteriously, the professional Banned Books Crusaders have had nothing to say about them.2 This despite the fact that the bans some of these books faced negatively impacted availability and sales, far, far more than anything “Moms for Liberty” would be able to manage in its wildest dreams—with far greater long-lasting chilling effects on the freedom to share ideas.
Let’s be fair, though. Perhaps the ALA simply isn’t aware of these book bans! Maybe if you suggest to your local librarian that she put a copy of Irreversible Damage next to that well-worn copy of The Hate U Give they keep pretending has been banned, she’ll happily take you up on it. (If she does, recommend her for a raise to your city council, because she’s a Real One!)
But if you want the ALA itself to say anything about Irreversible Damage, well… don’t hold your breath. You know and I know and they know and everyone knows that, at the national level, Banned Books Week has never been about book bans.
So go ahead and share this graphic with the world—if that feels fun to you. (It felt fun to me, which is why I wrote the article.)
The end! The rest of this post is sources, with a very brief conclusion and a few honorable mentions at the way bottom.
Sources for the Graphic
When Harry Became Sally, by Ryan T. Anderson
Banned by Amazon for four years. Ban summarily reversed in early 2025, likely due to the re-election of Donald Trump. The ban and its direct impact discussed by the author at First Things: “When Amazon Erased My Book”.
Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling
In fairness, JKR still mints money for everyone, so only a few extremists still take her off the shelves. Nevertheless, if every momentary, unsuccessful parental challenge for sexual content in the text merits an inclusion on the ALA’s banned books list, surely it matters if a famous bookstore bans an author for her real-world political views. That’s exactly what The Booksmith did this year, per National Review: “California Bookstore Pulls J.K. Rowling’s Books from Shelves over Author’s Defense of Sex-Based Women’s Rights”.
Seems like it also matters if a museum of popular culture erases the creator of the biggest literary pop culture phenomenon of the current century, like Stalin erasing Trotsky from photographs, for those same political views. Yet here we are, The Art newspaper reports: “J.K. Rowling removed from museum’s Harry Potter displays over transphobic views.”
James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl
In puritanical Victorian England, they used to take great classics and delete all the naughty words and adult content. This was called “bowdlerization,” named after Thomas Bowdler, whose edition of The Family Shakespeare deleted all the sexual innuendos. Thus, for example, in Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio’s dirty remark:
Mercutio. ‘Tis no less, I tell you, for the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon.
Nurse. Out upon you! What a man are you?!
Becomes:
Mercutio. ‘Tis no less, I tell you, for the hand of the dial is now upon the point of noon.
The Nurse’s rebuke is omitted altogether.3
Everyone agrees this Victorian form of censorship was terrible. It corrupted the actual great works of our history. It injured rich (and sometimes earthy) characterizations of complex characters. It sucked the marrow out of powerful language. It created continuity errors at times. It could even ruin the meter!4 One of the great advances of the twentieth century was the extinction of bowdlerization in literature.
Or so we thought. Roald Dahl’s books were all bowdlerized in 2023. This despite Dahl’s impassioned insistence during his life that not “a single comma in one of my books” could be changed without his personal authorization.
If you want an unexpurgated version of James and the Giant Peach, you have no option to buy it new. You have to either buy a specially-marked boxed set of all his works, or go to a used books store and hope for the best—or pirate the book. You do not have a legal right to pirate unbowdlerized Roald Dahl books, but you do have a moral right.5 But I talk about copyright in the item on Dr. Seuss, so I’ll leave it there for now. For now: censorship is back, it is far more pervasive and restricting than any so-called “book ban” from a library, and the ALA has nothing to say about it—even as it has spilled hundreds of pages of ink protesting censorship of obscene images marketed to young teenagers.
Theft of Fire, by Devon Eriksen
This one wasn’t actually pulled off the shelves… since, as a self-published book, it really wasn’t on the shelves to begin with. However, the full story here was egregious enough to make the list: as a birthday surprise, the author’s wife secretly entered his book into a self-published novel competition.
Winning a competition like that can be a big deal for a self-published novel. Working outside the world of established publishers with mega-marketing budgets and big retail deals, a huge crop of self-published books dies unprofitable every year, not because they are bad, but because nobody is paying attention.6 Theft of Fire was doing well in the competition.
However, the author had conservative politics,7 and sometimes tweeted about them. The competition he was in found out about this, created a code of conduct ex nihilo mid-competition, then banned the book from the competition for Eriksen’s alleged violations of the code the following day, without ever citing any specific violations, and despite the fact that Eriksen (who did not know he was in the competition!) had never agreed to any code of conduct.
Does this sort of thing ever happen to progressives? Honest question. Progressive privilege is a huge thing where I live, but I live in a blue area, so it’s expected that I would see a lot of progressive censoriousness toward conservatives, and indeed I have shaped my online life, my chosen creative pursuits, and much of my expression around the risk of cancellation.8 So maybe it does happen, somewhere! Either way, cancellation of authors for mainstream political opinions9 should certainly concern the champions of “Banned Books.”
“The Artificial N*****”, by Flannery O’Connor
(Ha ha, no, even in an article complaining about censoriousness, I’m not dumb enough to write that title out.)
For this one, there’s actually no mystery why the Professional Banned Books Crusaders haven’t complained about it: this short story was removed from classrooms pre-emptively. Thus, there is no paper trail for the crusaders to point to. I therefore can’t blame them for their silence!
In fact, to their credit, I think the crusaders probably would raise the hue and cry if there was a parental challenge against “The Artificial [N-Word].” They’ve acquitted themselves well in defending The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn against similar attacks10 (even if they are sometimes pretty mealy-mouthed about it).
Nevertheless, this short story, and others like it, continue to be severely censored, and everyone knows it. We need hardly list the many instances of stories being removed from school curricula because the story features a White person using the Deplorable Word. Teachers have gotten the message! I’ve talked to professors in the real world who teach Flannery O’Connor and ask why they aren’t assigning O’Connor’s favorite story, “The Artificial [N-Word].” They just laugh and laugh… There’s even a movie about what a bad idea it would be to teach this story!
So, unlike the rest of the poster, this item is not a callout of the ALA. They can’t be expected to defend stories that haven’t been formally challenged. It’s simply a victim of censorship that is worth reading and sharing!
Irreversible Damage, by Abigail Shrier
Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters is the exact kind of work the freedom to read was established to protect. Agree or disagree with her conclusions (or even her methodology), Shrier’s book offers sincere, researched, widely-shared views on a crucial matter of public policy and health. This goes to the heart of freedom of discussion, which breathes life into the whole liberal order.
Naturally, then, her book’s publication was met by a hysterical censorship campaign in which:
independent booksellers and Target11 pulled her book off the shelves;
the American Bookseller Association penned a groveling apology for daring to checks notes ship this recently published and popular book to, uh, checks notes again people who sell books??;
a top lawyer at the gorram American Civil Liberties Union called for the book to be banned;12
Kirkus Reviews refused to perform its standard review (as did every other major review outlet); and
Amazon employees launched a campaign to have the book removed from their bookstore, which controls roughly 40% of all U.S. print book sales (way more of the e-book market). They failed, but the campaign likely contributed to Amazon’s still-damaging decision to deny ad placement for the book.
Agree or disagree with the book, this was full-blown McCarthyite censorship.
Dangerous by Milo Yiannopolous
To be fair, Milo’s book was cancelled for what, in my view, was a perfectly legitimate reason: he, a public figure acting in a public capacity related to his employment, knowing that it would reflect on both his employer and on his publisher, chose to say that he thought that the age of consent was “not this black and white thing” and “older men can help younger boys discover who they are.”
In fairness to Milo, he had already revealed elsewhere that he had been sexually abused by a priest as a young teenager, although he himself insisted at the time that it was not sexual abuse.
In fairness to his publisher, what the actual hell, Milo? That’s pedophilia. What, we repeat, the hell?
I’ve never been against all cancellations. I don’t think anyone is. It always comes down to a rubric involving the badness of the offense, how mainstream the viewpoint is, the sincerity of the apology, the public-ness and power of the speaker, and how closely connected the offense was with the public figure’s official duties. Bill Clinton should have been cancelled for abusing his intern and Donald Trump should have been cancelled for “grab them by the pussy,” but that random electric company worker who lost his job for making the “okay” sign to a driver (it was not a white power symbol) should not have been cancelled. There is a spectrum betwixt.13
However, Banned Books Week admits no such nuance. Banned Books Week thinks no authorial conduct should ever infringe on the “freedom to read,” and has often defended Allen Ginsberg (author of “Howl”) who was an actual honest-to-God member of NAMBLA and (unlike Milo) held these views loudly and proudly as a member of the literati for decades. (Milo recanted.) So, if you’re gonna “read banned books,” you might as well find a copy of Milo’s Dangerous!
The Adventures of Ook and Gluk, by the Captain Underpants guy:
I’ll let Wikipedia tell the tale here:
On March 25, 2021, Dav Pilkey stated on his YouTube channel that he and Scholastic had removed the book from print in response to a Change.org petition of 289 signatures by Korean-American Billy Kim, accusing the book of stereotyping harmful to Asians, specifically singling out the “[Chinese] kung fu master [Master Wong] wearing what’s purported to be a traditional-style Tang coat”, for using “stereotypical Chinese proverbs”, and for having “a storyline that has the kung fu master rescued by the non-Asian [biracial] protagonists using their kung fu skills.”
According to the video, all money that Pilkey and his wife have made from the book would be donated to “charities that provide free books, art supplies, and theater for children in underserved communities; organizations that promote diversity in children’s books and publishing; and organizations designed to stop Asian hatred.”
The decision to pull the novel from publication was criticised by Singaporean Melissa Chen of The New York Post and Reason editor-in-chief Katherine Mangu-Ward. Chen praised “Wong [a]s a prime example of a positive portrayal of an Asian character in literature, [coming] across as endearing and full of wisdom”, and refuted Kim’s derision of the novel’s Chinese proverbs as stereotypical. Mangu-Ward called attention to previous campaigns to remove Pilkey’s Captain Underpants books from publication, calling Kung-Fu Cavemen “charming, not racist”, and cited “Pilkey’s whole gag [as] the censorial impulse [being] ridiculous and kids instinctively know[ing] it should be mocked.” She called for its republication amongst a list of books banned in America in August 2022. Following the novel’s removal from the market, Bleeding Cool reported that physical copies of the novel were now selling for $160 on eBay.14
This was a hit kids book, but then it was banned. It wasn’t banned from library shelves, but a book can’t be taken off library shelves if it is never printed, therefore never put on the shelf in the first place! There are zero copies of this book in my library system (Dakota County), or in any of the other library systems I have ever lived in (Ramsey & Hennepin County). There are three copies in Washington County, and, if you live in the seven counties of the Twin Cities, population ~3 million, those are your three copies.
For comparison, Dakota County has five copies of the sexually graphic “memoir-manifesto” All Boys Aren’t Blue, plus two audiobook copies, all shelved under “Teen.”15 Blue is the headline book of Banned Books Week this year.
The Adventures of Ook and Gluk is not mentioned. As far as I can tell, Banned Books Week has never mentioned Ook and Gluk.
And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, by Dr. Seuss
I wrote about the publisher’s book ban (followed quickly by eBay’s book ban) in 2021, so I won’t repeat myself here:
(I mostly talked about copyright law, which enables book bans by keeping books out of the public domain.)
I will only add that I thought it was almost endearing when I discovered that the NAACP had put out a press release openly calling for “censorship” of this book, with “censorship” right there in the title! Well, they got what they wanted, yet I never saw this book on a Banned Books Week display.
Read Banned Books.
Many people want to “Read Banned Books” because they believe all book bans are being caused by powerful forces of censorship that want to keep important ideas out of the readers’ hands, simply because those ideas might threaten those in power.16
Is that you? If so, how much more threatening must these books be to the powerful? They’re so banned that even the people who professionally tell you to “Read Banned Books” don’t tell you about these banned books!
So you should probably put them on top of your list! And maybe share this graphic!
Honorable Mentions
I would have liked to include these on the graphic, but there was only room for nine, and some of these didn’t have available cover art.
Orson Scott Card’s Superman book, which was banned so hard it wasn’t even written, because comic book publishers chose to punish Card for holding a then-popular opinion on a then-hotly contested social issue.
Johnny the Walrus, by Matt Walsh, by logic that is no more loopy than the ALA’s.
Blood Heir, by Amélie Wen Zhao, though her cancellation had a happy ending relatively quickly
“I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter,” by Isabel Fall (#ownvoices), though her cancellation didn’t
The Goosebumps series and the James Bond novels, both of which were also bowdlerized in 2023, just like Roald Dahl.
A Birthday Cake for George Washington, by Ramin Ganeshram, but its cover is the wrong shape for my graphic.
De Civitate Next Voyages: I need to do some paywalled content in the next week or so, and I think I have a Short Reviews in me. In theory, the week after that should be an If They’d Made Me Pope. Then I think I’ll finally be all out of excuses to put off Revising the Seventeenth Amendment, Part III. (I also have a half-written comment reply; you know who you are and I’m still sorry for the delay, but it’s hard to steal time between posts.)
In several cases, I am, very obviously, using Banned Books Weeks’ extraordinarily broad and dishonest definition of “book ban.” None of the books I list today were ever banned from private ownership by the government (but neither has any “banned book” mentioned in any “banned books week” in recent decades). Most remained publicly available at all times from many reputable booksellers (but so did all the ALA’s alleged “banned books”). Two of the books on my list weren’t even taken off any physical shelves! (That’s true of most books in the ALA’s “banned books” count. They count it as “censorship” if a single parent challenges a book, even if this does not result in the library taking any action.)
The ALA may retort that it only cares about books removed from libraries, but this retort merely exposes the grift. (It also betrays their so-called principles and isn’t true anyway, since the ALA complains a lot about classroom curricular decisions.) If the United States national government banned the publication or sale of all books by Linda Greenhouse, with stiff fines attached, this would obviously be a paramount concern for anyone who cares about book bans per se. However, as long as the national government didn’t force libraries to divest existing copies, the ALA would (allegedly) have nothing to say about it during “Banned Books Week”!
That’s because, as I’ve argued, “Banned Books Week” is simply a “Librarians Against Democracy” week. The American Library Association hates the fact that libraries are public institutions that have to make discretionary choices and that voters can rightly hold officials accountable for bad use of their discretion. That’s it. As long as they’re wrap themselves in the “censorship” flag, I’ll do the same, but always remember it’s just makeup.
Librarians remain wonderful people, and libraries critical institutions for the public, as I wrote in all past articles, but the American Library Association is a cancer.
For some of them, I document this official silence in the 2023 article.
Act I, Scene I comes out even worse for wear, with the obvious low-class brutality of Gregory and Sampson toned way down. The famous reference to “maidenheads” (the moment too many high school freshmen males learn what a hymen is) (not me, I was educated) is deleted altogether. The original:
Sampson. ’Tis true, and therefore women, being the
weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the wall. Therefore
I will push Montague’s men from the wall and
thrust his maids to the wall.Gregory. The quarrel is between our masters and us
their men.Sampson. ’Tis all one. I will show myself a tyrant.
When I have fought with the men, I will be civil
with the maids; I will cut off their heads.Gregory. The heads of the maids?
Sampson. Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads.
Take it in what sense thou wilt.
Bowdler’s edition:
Gre. That shows thee a weak slave ; for the weakest goes to the wall. The quarrel is between our masters, and us their men.
Sam. ‘Tis all one, I will show myself a tyrant.
Gre. Draw thy sword ; here comes two of the house of the Montagues.
Yuck! No wonder kids these days don’t want to read anymore! (for nineteenth-century values of “these days”)
It doesn’t here. One point to Thomas Bowdler.
Of course, there can be legal consequences to breaking the law, even an unjust law.
On that subject: my friend Luke LoPresto’s indie novel, Between Charon and Pana, is (per my review) an entertaining chase through the alien geography (and geology) of a lost human colony. If you liked David Weber’s Honor Harrington books, I think you’re likely to enjoy Charon and Pana. And it’s available now on Amazon!
I’m not getting remunerated for saying this. I just wanted to show that there are good self-published books.
Eriksen is, to be clear, considerably to my right, flirting with the “dissident fiction” fringe (Zero HP Lovecraft/BAP), though still certainly as close to the mainstream as Maia Kobabe, lauded and ALA-defended author of Gender Queer.
I must admit that his Twitter poll, “Who would you rather babysit your child: Sen. Scott Wiener or Gen. Erwin Rommel?” does, in the post-Charlie Kirk, post-Jay Jones era, make me think. If I were David French or Amy Barrett, with wonderful adopted kids, it’s gotta be Wiener, right? But my kids are White. Probably still Wiener? But, really, if those were my options, I think I’d just cancel date night!
I would never even try to get a book published traditionally under my real name, no matter how good, and no matter how hard I worked to disguise my politics. Someone would find this blog and that would be that, so there’s no point even investing the effort.
Full kudos to my friends who have been traditionally published, but I will obviously not be linking to their Amazon pages to promote their books, because it would put them at risk, and that’s so automatic for me I almost didn’t mention it. Really, do progressives ever have this?
An opinion is mainstream if it is held by more than 10% of society, even if it is very evil and odious and undeserving, such as the belief that Jews should be gassed, or the belief that third-trimester abortion should be legal.
Attacks on Huck Finn are very, very old:
In 1885, the Concord Public Library banned the book for its “coarse language.” Critics deemed Twain’s use of slang as demeaning and damaging. One reviewer called it “the veriest trash more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people.” The Brooklyn Public Library banned the book in 1905 for the use of the word “sweat” (instead of perspiration) and for saying, “Huck not only itched but scratched.” Twain fired back by saying, “Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.”
Banned for sweat!
Target backed down a short time later when the backlash was so severe that management forced a reversal, but much of the Target rank-and-file was furious, and still supported the book ban.
In fairness to Strangio, he later claimed that’s not what he meant. To be fair to me, he’s transparently full of crap.
I’ve always thought I should write about it, but I haven’t gotten around to it.
They now sell for about $4.50, so that did not last, but you still have to buy them on eBay, or from some other second-hand store.
In case you think this is a popularity thing: All Boys Aren’t Blue has only double the number of Goodsreads ratings as Ook and Gluk… despite having remained in print for the last four years! Ook and Gluk is older, having been published in 2010, but, man, Dakota still has 19 copies of Captain Underpants #3, originally published in 1999!
To be clear, I think that’s a very reasonable position. if Banned Books Week actually had anything to do with banned books, I’d be the same way.