--- title: Banned Books Week: Classic Literature Censorship History description: From Waugh to Walker, the banned-books list has plenty of literary highlights canonical: https://time.com/3418361/banned-books-week/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-09-22T17:15:05.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:07:42.626Z article:section: Ideas og:title: It's Banned Books Week. Here are 5 classic books to celebrate og:description: From Waugh to Walker, the banned-books list has plenty of literary highlights og:url: https://time.com/3418361/banned-books-week/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: It's Banned Books Week. Here are 5 classic books to celebrate twitter:description: From Waugh to Walker, the banned-books list has plenty of literary highlights twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # It's Banned Books Week: Here are 5 Classic Books to Celebrate With  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Sep 22, 2014 5:15 PM UTC  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Sep 22, 2014 5:15 PM UTC _Brideshead Revisited_, by Evelyn Waugh. _The Color Purple_, by Alice Walker. _The Kite Runner_, by Khaled Hosseini. _In the Night Kitchen_, by Maurice Sendak. _Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret_, by Judy Blume. Each of the above is, for most people, safely tucked away in the pantheon of “good books.” But that hasn’t stopped each from seeming, for others, bad enough to ban. They’re all on the American Library Association’s [lists](http://www.ala.org/bbooks/bannedbooksweek) of challenged books, which the organization is promoting in honor of [Banned Books Week ](http://www.ala.org/bbooks/bannedbooksweek)(Sept. 21–27, this year), a celebration of the fact that speaking out against censorship has caused most American attempts at book-banning, by their estimation, to fail. Even so, a quick look at those lists reveals that banning books is very much not a thing of the past — and that, as an expert on the effects of book banning told TIME for a 1981 [story](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/printout/0,8816,924691,00.html) about the rise of the practice, “nothing is safe.” As that article pointed out, the range of books that have been banned in the U.S. includes not only literary classics but also the dictionary, because “some organizations … objected to the sexual intimations of the definition of the word bed as a transitive verb.” (Even TIME itself has been a banned “book,” though that was [in Europe during the early months of World War II](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,761921,00.html).) Part of the reason why book banning remains so prevalent in the U.S. is that the challenges to books happen mostly on a local level. The federal government stays out of it, but individual schools and libraries are, as TIME put it in that 1981 story, “eager to protect everybody from hazards like ugly words, sedition, blasphemy, unwelcome ideas and, perhaps worst of all, reality.” Still, TIME explained, just because each ban only affects a small portion of the population, that doesn’t mean the bans don’t add up: --- > “” --- **_Read the full 1981 story about the increasing incidence of book banning, here in TIME’s archives:_** [The Growing Battle of the Books](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,924691,00.html)  Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh Chapman and Hall  The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini Riverhead Books  The Color Purple, by Alice Walker Harcourt Brace Jovanovich  In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak Harper Collins  Are You There God? 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