This selective list provides information about numerous books and some magazines and newspapers that have been challenged in Canada and internationally in past decades. Each challenge sought to limit public access to these publications in schools, libraries, and elsewhere. Some challenges were upheld; others were rejected. We have tried to update our research on unresolved challenges.
Because some challenges are dismissed, the publications remain on library shelves or curriculum lists. We think it worthwhile to include such instances because the effect of a controversy over publications can spread, even though the would-be banners lose. A book or magazine with a controversial reputation can be quietly dropped from reading lists and curricula.
Because organizations and community groups that ask for book and magazine bans usually want to avoid public controversies, we often find it difficult to discover why challenges are launched or what becomes of them. If you know of book or magazine or newspaper challenges or, better still, satisfactory resolutions anywhere in Canada, please use our online case study form to report a challenge to the Freedom of Expression Committee.
Report a Challenge
A dystopian horror, a black comedy, an exploration of choice, A Clockwork Orange by English writer Anthony Burgess, is also a work of exuberant invention which created a new language for its characters.
A Jest of God — which won the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction in 1966 — depicts the unhappy life of an elementary schoolteacher in small-town Manitoba.
Novel about a 12-year-old Palestinian boy living in an Israeli-occupied area.
This novel by Mark Twain is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. Set in a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist over 20 years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.
Children’s book about two penguins who create a nontraditional family.
A book for youngsters written by a multiple prize-winning author.
Biography of a Canadian judge whose jurisdiction included a First Nations community.
