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The Most Challenged Books of last year, 2022.
The American Library Association tracked 1,269 challenges to library, school, and university materials and services in 2022. Of the 2,571 unique titles that were challenged or banned in 2022, here are the top 13 most challenged.
And we added a few fun totes, just in case you need a new one!
We have a few new choices of totes available in the store as well -- including our fabulous Edmonds bookshop tote! check them out next time you are in!
A bonus list of books below the totes, are some of the most frequently banned and challenged books over the last few years.
A PEN America report issued in late September called "Banned in the USA: The Mounting Pressure to Censor" found that the number of public school bans in the country increased by 33% in the 2022-23 school year compared to the previous school year. The report and so much more information on the PEN America website, here.
And 2023 T-shirts!
From ABA's Free Expression Initiative: Independent bookstores supporting the right to read. Order them here!
short sleeve, long sleeve, hoodies, kids sizes, all kinds of different colors...
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2020 ALA Alex Award Winner 2020 Stonewall — Israel Fishman Non-fiction Award Honor Book
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...
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about Gender Queer: A Memoir
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$18.99
In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson's All Boys Aren't Blue explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. A New York Times Bestseller!Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News, Today Show, and MSNBC feature st...
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about All Boys Aren't Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto
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$16.00
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A PARADE BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME • From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtly and grace. In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlov...
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about The Bluest Eye (Vintage International)
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$17.99
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 bo...
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about Flamer
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$12.99
The award-winning, genre-defining debut from John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and The Fault in Our Stars
Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award • A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist • A New York Times Bestseller • A USA Today Bestseller • NPR’s Top Ten Best-Ever...
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about Looking for Alaska
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$15.99
Read the cult-favorite coming-of-age story that takes a sometimes heartbreaking, often hysterical, and always honest look at high school in all its glory. Now a major motion picture starring Logan Lerman and Emma Watson, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a funny, touching, and haunting modern class...
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about The Perks of Being a Wallflower
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$17.99
One of the American Library Association's Top 10 Most Banned Books for the past two years, this award-winning coming-of-age novel takes readers into the heart and humor of a young man determined to achieve the ever-changing American dream. He just happens to find himself along the way.
“Mike Muñoz I...
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about Lawn Boy
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$16.99
A New York Times bestseller—over one million copies sold! A National Book Award winner A Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner
Bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own ha...
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about The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (National Book Award Winner)
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$12.99
A dangerous forbidden romance rocks a Texan oil town in 1937, when segregation was a matter of life and death.
A Top Ten Most Challenged Book of the Year
"This is East Texas, and there's lines. Lines you cross, lines you don't cross. That clear?" New London, TX. 1937. Naomi Vargas is Mexican America...
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about Out of Darkness
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$19.00
The seductive and stunning #1 New York Times bestselling sequel to Sarah J. Maas's spellbinding A Court of Thorns and Roses.
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 ...
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about A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses #2)
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$14.99
The #1 New York Times bestselling tale of addiction—the first in the Crank trilogy—from master poet Ellen Hopkins.
Life was good before I met the monster.
After, life was great, At least
for a little while.
Kristina Snow is the perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never any t...
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about Crank (The Crank Trilogy)
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The New York Times bestselling novel that inspired the hit film! This is the funniest book you’ll ever read about death. It is a universally acknowledged truth that high school sucks. But on the first day of his senior year, Greg Gaines thinks he’s figured it out. The answer to the basic existen...
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about Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (Revised Edition)
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The bestselling young adult non-fiction book on sexuality and gender!
Lesbian. Gay. Bisexual. Transgender. Queer. Intersex. Straight. Curious. This book is for everyone, regardless of gender or sexual preference. This book is for anyone who's ever dared to wonder. This book is for YOU.
This candid, ...
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about This Book Is Gay
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$22.00
Tote bags for the rebellious readers who don't mind being loud and proud. Bring a book or three in your tote bag for your world-changing escapades.
14" wide x 15.5" tall x 5" gusset, natural cotton, 22" handles
Made 100% in the USA....
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about Banned Books (Flames) Tote (Lovelit)
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50 banned books. One tote bag.
Product Details
• 100% cotton canvas• Inner pocket• Flat tote• 13.5" w x 15.5" h• 10" strap (hanging)• Made in the USA...
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about Banned Books Tote Bag
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$22.00
Get your priorities straight with this stylish beach tote, perfect for carrying your favorite books
14" wide x 15.5" tall x 5" gusset, natural cotton, 22" handles
Made 100% in the USA....
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about Eat. Sleep. Beach. Read. Tote (Lovelit)
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$14.99
A 2015 Stonewall Honor BookA groundbreaking work of LGBT literature takes an honest look at the life, love, and struggles of transgender teens.
Author and photographer Susan Kuklin met and interviewed six transgender or gender-neutral young adults and used her considerable skills to represent them ...
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about Beyond Magenta: Transgender and Nonbinary Teens Speak Out
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$8.99
BE WHO YOU ARE.
When people look at Melissa, they think they see a boy named George. But she knows she's not a boy. She knows she's a girl.
Melissa thinks she'll have to keep this a secret forever. Then her teacher announces that their class play is going to be Charlotte's Web. Melissa really, reall...
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about Melissa (previously published as GEORGE)
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This crucial, empowering, #1 New York Times bestselling exploration of racism—and antiracism—in America makes critical ideas accessible for teen readers, adapted from Ibram X. Kendi's National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning.This is NOT a history book.This is a book about the here and ...
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about Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning
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A 2016 Coretta Scott King Author Honor book, and recipient of the Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature.
In this New York Times bestselling novel, two teens—one black, one white—grapple with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community,...
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about All American Boys
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The groundbreaking National Book Award Finalist and Michael L. Printz Honor Book with more than 3.5 million copies sold, Speak is a bestselling modern classic about consent, healing, and finding your voice.
"Speak up for yourself—we want to know what you have to say." From the first moment of her fr...
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about Speak
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$16.99
A Minneapolis Children's Theatre Company Original World Premiere Production A NEW YORK TIMES and #1 INDIEBOUND BEST SELLER American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom's Top 10 Most Challenged Books A Little Free Library Action Book Club Selection National Parenting Product Award...
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about Something Happened in Our Town: A Child's Story about Racial Injustice
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Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American Read
Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South—and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred
One of the most cherished stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been t...
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about To Kill a Mockingbird
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A controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great Depression They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alie...
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about Of Mice and Men
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HBO's Emmy-winning Last Week Tonight with John Oliver presents a children's book about a Very Special boy bunny who falls in love with another boy bunny.
100 percent of Last Week Tonight's proceeds will be donated to The Trevor Project and AIDS United.
Meet Marlon Bundo, a lonely bunny who lives w...
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about Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Presents: A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo (HBO)
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2016 Winner of the Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s Non-Fiction
2016 ALA Stonewall Book Award, Honor Book
2016 ALA Notable Children's Book
A comic book for kids that includes children and families of all makeups, orientations, and gender identities, Sex Is a Funny Word is an essential reso...
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about Sex Is a Funny Word: A Book about Bodies, Feelings, and YOU
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"Victorious . . . the premier queer-friendly fairy tale." Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"An illuminating fairy tale for young readers to be able to see that not every prince would like to marry a princess." School Library Journal
"A colorful and entertaining tale exploring sexuality, acceptance, an...
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about Prince & Knight
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The story of a transgender child based on the real-life experience of Jazz Jennings, who has become a spokesperson for transkids everywhere
"This is an essential tool for parents and teachers to share with children whether those kids identify as trans or not. I wish I had had a book like this when I...
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about I Am Jazz
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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (The New York Times). Now an award-winning Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss.
Look for The Testaments, the bestselling, award-winning the sequel to The ...
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about The Handmaid's Tale: A Novel
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From Raina Telgemeier, the #1 New York Times bestselling, multiple Eisner Award-winning author of Smile, Sisters, and Guts!
Callie loves theater. And while she would totally try out for her middle school's production of Moon over Mississippi, she can't really sing. Instead she's the set designer fo...
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about Drama: A Graphic Novel
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Harry Potter has never been the star of a Quidditch team, scoring points while riding a broom far above the ground. He knows no spells, has never helped to hatch a dragon, and has never worn a cloak of invisibility.
All he knows is a miserable life with the Dursleys, his horrible aunt and uncle, and...
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about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, Book 1)
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And Tango Makes Three is the bestselling, heartwarming true story of two penguins who create a nontraditional family.
At the penguin house at the Central Park Zoo, two penguins named Roy and Silo were a little bit different from the others. But their desire for a family was the same. And with the he...
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about And Tango Makes Three
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