The American Library Association has issued its annual list of books most frequently targeted for removal from library shelves because of claims they’re inappropriate reading for young people.
The list is part of the ala’s annual “State of America’s Libraries” report. The most-challenged-books list is in the intellectual-freedom section of the report, which also details fights over books that were resolved without yanking them.
The ala’s office of intellectual freedom defines a challenge as a “formal, written complaint filed with a library or school” that requests reading material be “restricted or removed because of its content or appropriateness.” In 2013, that number was 307, far fewer than the 464 filed in 2012, and far lower than the number of challenges filed each year of the 1980s and ‘90s.
