Banned Books Week is an annual event to highlight the importance of the First Amendment, the problems with censorship and celebrating the freedom to read. Here is my list – Top 5 favorite banned books:
1. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. I don’t think enough people know and appreciate the meaning of “Stay Golden, Ponyboy.” My brother even had a friend we nicknamed Ponyboy just so we could say that!
Banned for… depicting kids from broken families, alcohol and drug abuse, violence and profanity.
2. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. I first read this in my gifted class. The idea of tesseracts floored me. I got so into all the ideas that this book went through I read every book in the collection. A Wind in the Door, An Acceptable Time, Many Waters (which is much more controversial than Wrinkle, I would think) and a LOT of others.
Banned for…including witchcraft and such.
3. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (or as he is known in Garden State “Aldous Huxtable”). I think this was on a list of books we had to choose to read throughout a school year. It wasn’t for a report or anything, our teacher just decided if we had “free time” in her class, we had to read something from that list. Which is pretty cool, because I also read “The Cay” and “Summer of My German Soldier” from that list. So back to the topic at hand. It blew my mind to a more open way of thinking. Maybe in the future, “God” with a capital G will be a lesser deity than Ford. Such a foreign concept to my young mind, and yet it made something in there click. It was banned-book deliciousness at its best.
Banned for… “negative activities” such as drugs and sex
4. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Banned for… not only its overt tones of child violence and negative activities, but also a thinly-veiled indictment of the Christian Church. If you aren’t sure what I’m talking about, read (or re-read) and tell me that the majority (if not all) the hell and havoc does not stem from the church school boys.
5. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. This is the first book I was required to read for class that I didn’t mind being forced into reading.
Banned for… profanity, sex and racial themes
What are your favorite banned books?
Peppered Thought 
I cannot believe some of the books that have made this list. Its just amazing to me. My oldest is reading To Kill a Mockingbird in his English Class. That was announced last night at the school. Thanks so much for sharing.