Challenged Books

What's the difference between a banned book and a challenged book?

What kinds of books frequently get challenged in Canada?

Why should you care about this issue at all?

This task will get you to look a bit more closely at book challenges in Canada and get you thinking about how this issue affects you. It's a complicated topic, but it's one that's absolutely worth learning about.

Banned Books

Finding Challenged Books

News organizations have lots of articles about instances of book challenges and book bans. They're a great resource to learn about books that are being challenged right now.

Freedom to Read keeps a list of frequently challenged books in Canada. They also do lots of advocacy work to protect intellectual freedom.

PEN America does a lot of work to track book challenges and book bans. They're American, but many of the books they mention are also challenged in Canada.

Use Alexandria to search our catalogue and see what books we have

Use the "Search" function. You can look things up by keyword, title, author, etc.

Find out more about this book and why it was challenged

The Walrus

A Canadian non-profit media organization that publishes an award-winning national magazine eight times a year, along with daily online content, podcasts, and events.