'Forever' & Co: Frequently Banned & Challenged Books for Teens

FICTION

Released: June 15, 1951

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger

"A strict report, worthy of sympathy."

A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact. Read full book review >

CHILDREN'S

Released: March 12, 1974

THE CHOCOLATE WAR

by Robert Cormier

"Mature young readers will respect the uncompromising ending that dares disturb the upbeat universe of juvenile books."

Vicious and violent mob cruelty in a boy's prep school is not a new theme but Cormier makes it compellingly immediate in this novel of Trinity High, a boys' day school with the close, concentrated, self-contained atmosphere of a boarding school, temporarily headed by the venomous, manipulating Brother Leon and unofficially run by power-obsessed senior Archie Costello, the ingeniously audacious "assigner" for a secret organization called the Vigils. Read full book review >

CHILDREN'S

Released: Oct. 20, 1975

FOREVER . . .

by Judy Blume

"Another way of looking at Forever is as an updated Seventeenth Summer."

Increasingly Judy Blume's books center on single topics and the topic here, as pronounced in the first sentence, is getting laid. Read full book review >

CHILDREN'S

Released: May 30, 1988

FALLEN ANGELS

by Walter Dean Myers

"War-story fans will find enough action here, though it isn't glorified; thoughtful readers will be haunted by this tribute to a ravaged generation."

The powerful story of an introspective Harlem youth who is sent to fight in Vietnam. Read full book review >

CHILDREN'S

Released: March 1, 1989

ALICE IN RAPTURE, SORT OF

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

"A lively, authentic story, with refreshingly pleasant characters—one that may help readers to realize (as Alice does at summer's end) that adapting to everyone else's prescriptions is less important than being oneself."

A wide-ranging author—who has proved herself adept at fantasy, the teen-age novel, humor, and historical fiction—writes a funny, perceptive story about the summer before junior high: 12-year-old Alice's Dad calls it "The Summer of the First Boyfriend." Read full book review >

CHILDREN'S

Released: Sept. 1, 1997

BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE

by Annette Curtis Klause

"The werewolves' taste for risky pranks and the author's knack for double—and even triple—entendres add sly undercurrents to this fierce, suspenseful chiller. (Fiction. 12-14)"

Klause returns to the steamy sensuality of her first book, The Silver Kiss (1990), for this tale of a hot-blooded teenage werewolf who falls for a human "meat-boy.'' Grieving for her father and unimpressed by the age-mates in her pack, Vivian defies her mother and fellow lycanthropes by setting her sights on suburban poet-schoolmate Aiden Teague. Read full book review >

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'Forever' & Co: Frequently Banned & Challenged Books for Teens