Libraries respect everyone’s freedom to read what they choose. Staff across all University of Iowa Libraries selected some of their favorite banned books this year:
| 1984 | George Orwell |
| The 1619 Project | Nicole Hannah-Jones |
| The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian | Sherman Alexie |
| The Autobiography of Malcolm X | Malcolm X and Alex Haley |
| 120 Banned Books | Nicholas J. Karolidas |
| All American Boys | Jason Reynolds & Brendan Kiely |
| All Boys Aren’t Blue | George M. Johnson |
| All Quiet on the Western Front | Erich Maria Remarque |
| And Tango Makes Three | John Richardson and Peter Parnell |
| Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging | Louise Rennison |
| Barefoot Gen | Keiji Nakazawa |
| The Best Little Boy in the World | Andrew Tobias |
| Bless Me, Ultima | Rudolfo Anaya |
| Blood and Chocolate | Annette Curtis Klause |
| Bone (GN Series) | Jeff Smith |
| The Book Thief | Zusak |
| Books Under Fire | Pat R. Scales |
| Born a Crime | Trevor Noah |
| Brave New World | Aldous Huxley |
| Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee | Dee Brown |
| Captain Underpants | Dav Pilkey |
| Carrie | Stephen King |
| Catch-22 | Joseph Heller |
| Charlotte’s Web | E.B. White |
| The Chocolate War | Robert Cormier |
| The Color Purple | Alice Walker |
| The Curious Incident of the Dog in the night-time | Mark Haddon |
| The Diary of a Young Girl | Anne Frank |
| Drama | Raina Telgemeier |
| Fahrenheit 451 | Ray Bradbury |
| Forever | Judy Blume |
| Fun Home: A family tragicomic | Alison Bechdel |
| gender queer | Maiai Kobabe |
| George | Alex Gino |
| The Giver | Lois Lowry |
| The Glass Castle: a memoir | Jeannette Walls |
| Go Tell It On the Mountain | James Baldwin |
| The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald |
| The Handmaid’s Tale | Margaret Atwood |
| Harry Potter | J.K. Rowling |
| The Hate U Give | Angie Thomas |
| His Dark Materials | Philip Pullman |
| The House on Mango Street | Sandra Cisneros |
| The Hunger Games | Suzanne Collins |
| I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Maya Angelou |
| The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks | Rebecca Skloot |
| In Cold Blood | Truman Capote |
| In the Dream House | Carmen Maria Machado |
| In the Night Kitchen | Maurice Sendak |
| Invisible Man | Ralph Ellison |
| James and the Giant Peach | Roald Dahl |
| To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee |
| The Kite Runner | Khaled Hosseini |
| A Light in the Attic | Shel Silverstein |
| Maus | Art Spiegelman |
| Of Mice and Men | John Steinbeck |
| Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children | Ransom Riggs |
| The New Jim Crow | Michelle Alexander |
| Nickel and Dimed | Barbara Ehrenreich |
| Olive’s Ocean | Kevin Henkes |
| Out of darkness | Ashley Hope Perez |
| The Outsiders | S.E. Hinton |
| A People’s History of the United States | Howard Zinn |
| Persepolis | Marjane Satrapi |
| Rainbow Boys | Alex Sanchez |
| A Separate Peace | John Knowles |
| Sex is a Funny Word | Cory Silverberg |
| Silent Spring | Rachel Carson |
| Slaughterhouse Five | Kurt Vonnegut |
| Something Happened in our town | Marianne Celano, et al |
| Speak | Laurie Halse Anderson |
| Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You | Jason Reynolds & Ibram X. Kendi |
| Their Eyes Were Watching God | Zora Neale Hurston |
| The Things They Carried | Tim O’Brien |
| Thirteen Reasons Why | Jay Asher |
| This Day in June | Gayle Pitman |
| Ulysses | James Joyce |
| What My Mother Doesn’t Know | Sonya Sones |
| When I was Puerto Rican | Esmerelda Santiago |
| Where the Wild Things Are | Maurice Sendak |
| A Wrinkle in Time | Madeline L’Engle |
| You Can’t Say that | Leonard S. Marcus (editor) |
| Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty | Greg Neri |