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School Library Journal and NCTE continue to champion works\u00a0that have long been taught in classrooms, including YA classics like Caroline B. Cooney’s The Face on the Milk Carton and Robert Cormier’s We All Fall Down.<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
Many of these titles are YA classics, such as\u00a0That Was Then, This Is Now, a companion to S.E. Hinton\u2019s\u00a0The Outsiders, itself a title continually on banned books lists. In Virginia, it was removed from a school district because it has \u201cgraphic language and subject matter\u201d and deals with \u201cbroken homes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alice Sebold\u2019s\u00a0The\u00a0Lovely Bones, adapted for a 2009 film starring Saoirse Ronan, was challenged because a parent considered it \u201cpornographic.\u201d 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\u2019s\u00a0The 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.<\/p>\n
Robert Cormier\u2019s books, most notably\u00a0The Chocolate War, have consistently appeared on challenged and banned books lists. The Margaret A. Edwards Award recipient\u2019s book\u00a0We All Fall Down\u00a0was also restricted in middle and high schools in Texas and Florida over concerns about the book\u2019s content and language.<\/p>\n
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.
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The NCTE reviews were adapted from the NCTE Rationale Database<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n See more from the\u00a0Defending the Canon project<\/a>
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