Banned Books Week – WCPS Library Contains 7 of 9 Most Challenged Books

HAGERSTOWN, MD News (10/2/2023) – Today marks the first day of “banned books week” across the globe, and we took a moment to analyze what book subjects are currently in Washington County Public Schools libraries. Among the statistics, we found that WCPS catalog contains a significant number of books on Socialism and Communism, versus a much smaller number of books on Capitalism. Even more interesting, we found that WCPS library contains 7 of the top 9 most challenged books according to the American Library Association.

The WCPS catalog consistently shows large numbers of books on Socialist and Democrat topics, as well as a larger number of books on sex and gender, when compared to other topics. For example, searches returned 563 books on sex, but only 174 on finance and 217 on employment. One of the most interesting discrepancies was 4,732 books on socialism, but only 186 books on capitalism.

Search Keyword	Total Titles	Elementary	Middle	High
Presidents
Obama	126	64	30	49
Bill Clinton	39	12	10	19
Trump	40	16	8	20
George W Bush	67	29	12	29
Political Parties
Republican	34	2	5	28
Democrat	84	21	13	58
Libertarian	0	0	0	0
Green Party	1	0	1	0
Government
Socialism	4,732	1,795	1,239	2,531
Communism	2,144	1,071	523	674
Capitalism	186	83	27	79
Democracy	131	35	19	76
General Subjects
Liberty	295	161	50	108
Gender	433	117	152	215
Sex	563	110	160	342
Finance	174	62	37	83
Employment	217	25	57	115
Elections	333	168	76	104
Constitution	357	126	59	170
Business	1,059	340	197	340
Economics	563	93	74	372

According to the American Library Association, challenging a book is “an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group.” The ALA publishes a “top 10” list of the most challenged books across the United States, but since there were multiple candidates tied for 10th place, we only examined the top 9. Of those top 9 challenged books, 7 of the books are present in WCPS libraries, with 2 of the books being available to middle school students.

Title	Author	Present in WCPS?	Content according to ALA
Gender Queer: A Memoir	Maia Kobabe	No	LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit
All Boys Aren’t Blue	George M. Johnson	High Schools	LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit
The Bluest Eye	Toni Morrison	High Schools	depiction of sexual abuse, EDI content, claimed to be sexually explicit
Flamer	Mike Curato	High Schools	LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit
Looking for Alaska	John Green	High Schools	LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit
The Perks of Being a Wallflower	Stephen Chbosky	Middle, High Schools	depiction of sexual abuse, LGBTQIA+ content, drug use, profanity, claimed to be sexually explicit
Lawn Boy	Jonathan Evison	No*	LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian	Sherman Alexie	Middle, High Schools	profanity, claimed to be sexually explicit
Out of Darkness	Ashley Hope Perez	High Schools**	depictions of abuse, claimed to be sexually explicit

Unfortunately, some of the content of these books is so explicit that RFHC found our email account terminated due to the rejection of our emails to the Board of Education regarding an article about these books. As such, we will not be reaching out to the Board of Education for comment on this article, but will happily consider for publication any official comments emailed to us, as well as community thoughts on this topic.

Article by multiple RFHC contributors. This article was updated to include additional search topics based on reader feedback.