Research Guide - Banned Books - Rodems - LibGuides at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Books

Uni Library Reference Books

R 363.3109 B332L 2006 Banned Books
Volume 1: Literature Suppressed on Political Grounds
Volume 2: Literature Suppressed on Religious Grounds
Volume 3: Literature Suppressed on Sexual Grounds
Volume 4: Literature Suppressed on Social Grounds

Each volume in this series is organized alphabetically by title of the book banned. Check the index for author names, book titles, or places where banning occurs (states, cities, libraries).

If you find information about a book being challenged in here, but are struggling to find further information, your next step should be the newspaper databases.

E-Books

To access these e-books from home, you will need your Net-ID and Net-ID password.

Hit List for Children 2: Frequently Challenged Books by Beverley C. Becker
Hit List for Young Adults 2: Frequently Challenged Books by Teri S. Lesesne

Each chapter is dedicated to an author, subdivided into the books that have been challenged by that author. First, click on View this eBook. Use the Contents tab in the left toolbar to jump to a particular section. Use the Next and Previous buttons at the top of the page to flip the e-book page.

Want to read the reviews mentioned for each book? Search for the named newspaper in the A-Z List or in Lexis Nexis (in the Web Resources section of this page).

Defending frequently challenged young adult books: a handbook for librarians and educators

This handbook gives a profile of each book that includes its plot and characters; related materials and published reviews; awards and prizes; and Web and audiovisual resources.

Websites

Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom PDFs
The Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom covers challenges that occurred from 1952-2015. It was published by the Intellectual Freedom Committee of the American Library Association, and it reported attempts to remove materials from school and library shelves across the country.
Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy
Journal of Intellectual Freedom & Privacy (JIFP) has many of the features of the Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, from 2016-present day. It covers issues about the latest incidents of book banning in “censorship dateline,” the latest court rulings in “from the bench,” legal controversies in “is it legal?” and “success stories.”
Intellectual Freedom Blog
This resource is a great starting place for those who have chosen books that have been published more recently - for instance, in the last five years.
National Coalition Against Censorship
The National Coalition Against Censorship has worked with the National Council of Teachers of English on their banned books efforts in the past. Their website collects articles related to book bans and challenges through the country, among other things.

Online Newspapers

If you want to try to find out why a book was challenged, search newspapers for the title of your book and "banned" or "challenged" to find specific cases. Example: "gossip girl" and (banned or challenged)

To narrow your results, add words like "school" (since that's where many challenges are made) or "parents."

For the first two databases, select newspapers that are local in addition to major U.S. papers, as cases like these tend to make the small newspapers as well.

Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Full-text access to hundreds of recent (and even not-so-recent) newspaper and magazine articles, including the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. After you click search, notice that you can narrow your search by clicking on the categories in the left toolbar.
Access World News This link opens in a new window
Access World News from NewsBank provides full-text information and perspectives from over 600 U.S. and over 700 international sources, each with its own distinctive focus offering diverse viewpoints on local, regional and world issues. Date coverage varies with individual newspaper
ProQuest Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Search all 46 ProQuest Historical Newspaper titles owned by the University of Illinois, representing 19 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, as well as titles from Canada, the UK, and India. Coverage spans the 18th century to the 2010s and includes important publications like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Globe and Mail, and Chicago Tribune.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers is the definitive newspaper digital archive offering full-text and full-image articles for significant newspapers dating back to the 18th century. Every issue of each title includes the complete paper, cover-to-cover, with full-page and article images in easily downloadable PDF format. The full collection of ProQuest Historical Newspapers contains over 30 million digitized pages.

Literature Databases

Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Identifies biographies, bibliographies, and critical analyses of authors from every age and literary discipline. Coverage of more than 120,000 novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, and other writers, with in-depth coverage of 2,500 of the most-studied authors. Note that you can search by the title of your book. The advanced search gives you all sorts of options. This database only allows 4 simultaneous users.
NoveList This link opens in a new window
NoveList is an electronic readers' advisory resource which assists fiction readers in finding new authors and titles. It includes titles, authors, publication information, subjects, book reviews, over 1200 theme-oriented booklists, 150 award lists and links to 1000 fiction related web sites.
Alternate Access Link
Library and Information Science Source This link opens in a new window
Use subject words "censorship" or "prohibited books" or keywords "banned books" for a general search. If you have a specific book in mind, combine the title of the book (in quotes) with one of those subject or keywords, or simply search the book title to get a full picture of how it has been received (awards, challenges).
Alternate Access Link

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