Recently Banned and Challenged in Virginia Schools

Created on August 21, 2023, 3:21 pm

Last Updated August 21, 2023, 4:00 pm

These are some of the books that some school districts in Virginia have challenged and banned in school classrooms, curriculum, and libraries since 2021. Sources: PEN AMERICA INDEX OF SCHOOL BOOK BANS – FALL 2022, PEN AMERICA INDEX OF SCHOOL BOOK BANS – 2021-2022 https://www.virginiamercury.com/2023/06/15/school-districts-struggle-to-implement-new-laws-on-sexually-explicit-books/ https://richmond.com/news/local/education/full-list-of-the-19-books-banned-from-hanover-schools/article_8002070c-0ad4-11ee-9515-d77c8e1b95ca.html

1) All boys aren't blue: a memoir-manifesto

Author

Johnson, George M

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys.

Author

Formats:

Book, Audiobook on CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose...

3) Beyond magenta: transgender teens speak out

Author

Formats:

Book, eBook, Kindle

Description

"Author and photographer Susan Kuklin met and interviewed six transgender or gender-neutral young adults and used her considerable skills to represent them thoughtfully and respectfully before, during, and after their personal acknowledgment of gender preference. Portraits, family photographs, and candid images grace the pages, augmenting the emotional and physical journey each youth has taken. Each honest discussion and disclosure, whether joyful...

4) The bluest eye

Author

Series

Oprah's book club

Formats:

Book, Audiobook on CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in.Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni...

Author

Formats:

Description

Josh Mendel has a secret. Unfortunately, everyone knows what it is.
Five years ago, Josh’s life changed. Drastically. And everyone in his school, his town—seems like the world—thinks they understand. But they don’t—they can’t. And now, about to graduate from high school, Josh is still trying to sort through the pieces. First there’s Rachel, the girl he thought he’d lost years

...

6) Call me by your name

Author

Series

Call me by your name novels volume 1

Formats:

Book, Audiobook on CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' house, a cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference to the other. But during the warm, languorous summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their passion...

7) Choke: a novel

Author

Palahniuk, Chuck

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor’s life, go on to send checks to support him. When he’s not pulling this stunt, Victor cruises sexual...

8) A court of mist and fury

Author

Series

A court of thorns and roses volume 2

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Type

Description

Feyre has undergone more trials than one human woman can carry in her heart. Though she's now been granted the powers and lifespan of the High Fae, she is haunted by her time Under the Mountain and the terrible deeds she performed to save the lives of Tamlin and his people. As her marriage to Tamlin approaches, Feyre's hollowness and nightmares consume her. She finds herself split into two different people: one who upholds her bargain with Rhysand,...

9) A court of silver flames

Author

Series

A court of thorns and roses volume 5

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

"Nesta Archeron has always been prickly-proud, swift to anger, and slow to forgive. And ever since being forced into the Cauldron and becoming High Fae against her will, she's struggled to find a place for herself within the strange, deadly world she inhabits. Worse, she can't seem to move past the horrors of the war with Hybern and all she lost in it. The one person who ignites her temper more than any other is Cassian, the battle-scarred warrior...

10) Dime

Author

Description

Fourteen-year-old Dime, a foster child in Newark, New Jersey, finds love and family as a prostitute, but when her pimp rejects her for a new girl, will Dime have the strength to leave?

11) Fences: a play

Author

Series

The Century Cycle

Formats:

Book, eBook, Kindle

Description

Troy Maxson is a strong man, a hard man. He has had to be so to survive. Now, the 1950s are yielding to the the new spirit of liberation in the 1960s. The world he has learned to deal with is changing, leaving him a stranger, angry and afraid, in a world he never knew and to a wife and son he understands less and less.

Author

Formats:

eComic, Graphic Novel, Kindle

Description

Award-winning author and artist Mike Curato draws on his own experiences in Flamer, his debut graphic novel, telling a difficult story with humor, compassion, and love.
"This book will save lives." —Jarrett J. Krosoczka, author of National Book Award Finalist Hey, Kiddo
I know I'm not gay. Gay boys like other boys. I hate boys. They're mean, and scary, and they're always destroying something or saying

...

13) Gender Queer: A Memoir

Author

Formats:

eBook, Graphic Novel

Description

In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em.
Now, Gender Queer is here.
Maia's intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with

...

14) Good trouble: lessons from the civil rights playbook

Author

Noxon, Christopher

Description

"In words and vivid pen-and-watercolor illustrations, journalist Christopher Noxon dives into the real stories behind the front lines of the Montgomery bus boycott and the Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins and notable figures such as Rosa Parks and Bayard Rustin, all while exploring the parallels between the civil rights movement era and the present moment." --provided by publisher.

15) Haunted: a novel of stories

Author

Palahniuk, Chuck

Formats:

Book, Audiobook on CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

Twenty-three stories chronicle the experiences of people who have answered an ad for an artist's retreat, believing that they will find a peaceful refuge, only to find themselves isolated and trapped in a cavernous old theater. Haunted is a novel made up of stories: twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you'll ever encounter. The stories are told by people who have all answered an ad headlined 'Artists...

Author

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook

Description

Sixteen-year-old identical twin daughters of a district court judge and a candidate for the United States House of Representatives, Kaeleigh and Raeanne Gardella desperately struggle with secrets that have already torn them and their family apart.

17) Lawn boy: a novel

Author

Evison, Jonathan

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

"Mike Muñoz is a young Mexican American not too many years out of high school--and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew. Though he tries time and again to get his foot on the first rung of that ladder to success, he can't seem to get a break. But then things start to change for Mike, and after a raucous, jarring, and challenging trip, he finds he can finally see the future and his place in it"--

18) A lesson before dying

Author

Gaines, Ernest J

Formats:

Book, eBook, Kindle

Description

A deep and compassionate novel about a young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to visit a Black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting.--from Amazon.

19) Let's talk about it: the teen's guide to sex, relationships, and being a human

Author

Description

"A graphic novel about sex, sexuality, gender, body, consent, and many other topics for teens"--

20) Like a love story

Author

Description

It's 1989 in New York City, and for three teens, the world is changing. Reza is an Iranian boy who has just moved to the city with his mother to live with his stepfather and stepbrother. He's terrified that someone will guess the truth he can barely acknowledge about himself. Reza knows he's gay, but all he knows of gay life are the media's images of men dying of AIDS. Judy is an aspiring fashion designer who worships her uncle Stephen, a gay man...