The books on this list all have in common the fact that they were targeted for removal or restriction in libraries and schools, to which we at West Side Books say: Nice try!
Read more about banned books and the American Library Association's efforts to support "the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular" through events like Banned Books Week (held annually in late September) at this link: http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks
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 strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here.
The seductive and stunning #1 New York Times bestselling sequel to Sarah J. Maas's spellbinding A Court of Thorns and Roses.
Winner of the National Book Award
Jesmyn Ward, two-time National Book Award winner and author of Sing, Unburied, Sing, delivers a gritty but tender novel about family and poverty in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina.
Watch rupi kaur live now on Prime Video.
“Rupi Kaur is the Writer of the Decade.” – The New Republic
A hardcover gift edition of milk and honey, the #1 New York Times bestselling poetry and prose collection by rupi kaur, which has sold over 3 million copies worldwide. milk and honey is a collection
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.
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 stories
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.
#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.
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 now.
A 2021 Coretta Scott King Honor Book!
Winner of the 2020 National Book Award for Young People's Literature!
Winner of the 2020 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Fiction and Poetry!
In a small but turbulent Louisiana town, one boy's grief takes him beyond the bayous of his backyard, to learn that there is no right way to be yourself.
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 Winner (NAPPA)
Winner of the National Book Award
A New York Times Bestseller
"The queer romance we’ve been waiting for.”—Ms. Magazine
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT
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 Winner (NAPPA)
The bestselling first installment of the graphic novel acclaimed as “the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust” (Wall Street Journal) and “the first masterpiece in comic book history” (The New Yorker) • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • One of Variety’s “Banned and Challenged Books Everyone Should Read&rdqu
Now more than ever: Aldous Huxley's enduring masterwork must be read and understood by anyone concerned with preserving the human spirit
"A masterpiece. . . . One of the most prophetic dystopian works." —Wall Street Journal
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A spellbinding novel that transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. With a new afterword by the author.
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
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the National Book Award–winning author of Stamped from the Beginning comes a “groundbreaking” (Time) approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society—and in ourselves.
A New York Times bestseller
A 2015 Caldecott Honor Book
A 2015 Michael L. Printz Honor Book
An Eisner Award Winner