Freedom to Read Week Guide

Genre: Graphic Novel; Juvenile fiction.
Challenged in Canada. Objection: Robertson's series showed up on an Edmonton Public School book review site as "not recommended" under its "Books to Weed Out" section in 2018. The review cited the book's sensitive subject matter and abuse in residential schools as reasons for it not to be used in Edmonton Public Schools.
Description: "[F]ollows one Plains Cree family from the early 19th century to the present day. For Edwin, the story of his ancestors from both the distant and recent past must guide him through an uncertain present, to the dawn of a new future. 7 Generations explores the life of Stone, a young Cree warrior, the smallpox epidemic of 1870, the residential school system of the 20th century and its familial legacy"--Back cover.

Genre: Biography.
Challenged widely in the USA. Objection: Contains sexually graphic material, including descriptions of queer sex and masturbation.
Description: In a series of personal essays, a prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys.

Genre: Fiction; Juvenile fiction.
Challenged in Canada. 2019 Freedom to Read List. Objection: Not listed.
Description: The breathtaking story of five brothers who bring each other up in a world run by their own rules. As the Dunbar boys love and fight and learn to reckon with the adult world, they discover the moving secret behind their father's disappearance. At the center of the Dunbar family is Clay, a boy who will build a bridge--for his family, for his past, for greatness, for his sins, for a miracle. The question is, how far is Clay willing to go? And how much can he overcome?

Genre: Juvenile fiction.
Challenged in Canada. Objection: The parent objected to certain words in the text: “pervert,” “lordy” and “seethrough blouse.”
Description: The life of a ten-year-old boy in rural Virginia expands when he becomes friends with a newcomer who subsequently meets an untimely death trying to reach their hideaway, Terabithia, during a storm. Awarded the John Newberry Medal for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.

Genre: Personal narratives, Jewish; Biography; Cartoons and comics; Comic books, strips, etc.; Young adult.
Challenged in the USA. Objection: "Inappropriate language" and an illustration of a nude woman.
Description: The Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father's story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in "drawing us closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust" (The New York Times)

Challenged in Canada by an Onkwehonwe anti-racism alliance. Objection: “It was felt that there are some things that might be objectionable if taken out of context . . . A 14-year-old might not get the idea that Kinsella is using irony.”
Description: Collection of short stories written by W. P. Kinsella in 1977. The book contains seventeen stories narrated by Silas Ermineskin and is set on a Cree Indian reserve in Central Alberta and is about what happens in the lives of the people that live on the reserve. Challenge in Canada. Objection—“It was felt that there are some things that might be objectionable if taken out of context . . . A 14-year-old might not get the idea that Kinsella is using irony.”

Challenged in Canada. Objection: The parent said that teaching this book would be more appropriate at the Grade 11 level. The book is aimed at children aged 10 to 13.
Description: The Giver, the 1994 Newbery Medal winner, has become one of the most influential novels of our time. The haunting story centers on twelve-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community.

Genre: Comic books, strips, etc.
Challenged in Canada. Objection: Challenged for violence.
Description: Nobody Owens is a normal boy, except that he has been raised by ghosts and other denizens of the graveyard.

"In this second book in the Narnia-inspired Indigenous middle-grade fantasy series, Eli and Morgan travel back to Misewa, only to realize they've travelled back farther than expected. At school, Eli is being bullied, and while he tries to hide what's happening to him from Morgan, she knows something is wrong. Morgan herself is also in turmoil when she is given the phone number of her birth mother, and she struggles to know what to do with it. They turn to the place where they know they can learn the most, and make the journey back to the village to visit their anthropomorphic teachers. But things are different than they remember. It's summer, which is to be expected after what they accomplished on their last visit, but it's more than that. Then, they see Fisher as a boy, and realize that they've visited the past. What's more, the village is once again in peril."-- Provided by publisher.

Challenged in Canada. Objection: "Explicit language, immorality, and sexuality".
Description: Hold Fast is the widely acclaimed story of a young boy's struggle to survive in a new environment and his fight against those who stand as threats to his pride in himself and his way of life. Michael and his little brother Brent get uprooted from their tight-knit Newfoundland community after their parents are killed in a car accident. The brothers are separated as Michael moves to a larger city to live with his Aunt Ellen and his strict Uncle Ted. He develops a close friendship with his cousin Curtis, but struggles with grief, bullying at school and accepting his new environment. He eventually flees into the woodlands with Curtis in tow in search of freedom and escape.

Genre: Fiction.
Challenged in the USA. Objection: Sexually explicit content, language, age-inappropriate.
Description: Seventeen-year-old Greg has managed to become part of every social group at his Pittsburgh high school without having any friends, but his life changes when his mother forces him to befriend Rachel, a girl he once knew in Hebrew school who has leukemia.

Challenged in Canada. Objection: Pornographic content and unsuitable for teens.
Description: The critically acclaimed debut novel from Stephen Chbosky, Perks follows observant “wallflower” Charlie as he charts a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, and new friends. Sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Devastating loss, young love, and life on the fringes. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie must learn to navigate those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up.

Genre: Biography.
Challenged in Canada. Objection: The provincial government argued that the book should not be sold during the trials of the eight Christian Brothers charged with abusing boys at Mount Cashel.
Description: Determined to purge himself of his unhappy childhood memories as a ward of the Department of Child Welfare, and hoping to help prevent similar abuse of today's children, O'Brien began to write his story. Told in his simple and compelling words, Suffer Little Children poses the haunting question, why? It does not attempt to explain the stunning bureaucratic difference that allowed children to suffer. Nor does it offer any neat sociological reasoning behind the complacency that was demonstrated by so many. Rather it brings the issue of abuse down to its human and most basic level-what was felt and experienced by the child who endured it-and invites the reader to join the author in his search for answers.

Challenged in Canada. Objection: Age inappropriate.
Description: Written in alternating voices, Susin Nielsen deftly explores family tragedy and family ties; sibling rivalry and union; and adolescent confusion and revelation.

Challenged in Canada. Objection: Decried as a “values-void novel” by a National Post columnist. Soon after, a group of concerned parents, YA authors, teachers, and others started an online petition to revoke the award, citing the book’s “offensive” and “inappropriate” content.
Description: Winner, Governor General's Literary Award; CBC Canada Reads 2015 Runner-up. An edgy and extravagant YA novel about a glamorous boy named Jude. School is just like a film set: there's The Crew, who make things happen, The Extras who fill the empty desks, and The Movie Stars, whom everyone wants tagged in their Facebook photos. But Jude doesn't fit in. He's not part of The Crew because he isn't about to do anything unless it's court-appointed; he's not an Extra because nothing about him is anonymous; and he's not a Movie Star because even though everyone knows his name like an A-lister, he isn't invited to the cool parties. As the director calls action, Jude is the flamer that lights the set on fire.