The Books they don't want you to read (or listen to)! - Banned & Challenged Books

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

By: Maya Angelou
Narrated by: Maya Angelou
Length: 10 hours 10 minutes

Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters.

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute... Read more

To Kill a Mockingbird

By: Harper Lee
Narrated by: Sissy Spacek
Length: 12 hours 17 minutes

Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American ReadHarper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South—and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatredOne of the most cherished stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold... Read more

Flowers for Algernon

By: Daniel Keyes
Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
Length: 8 hours 59 minutes

“One of the best and most heartbreaking books I’ve read in a long time. The story of a man who is mentally handicapped and goes through an experimental surgery to make him smart. It works and he becomes a genius, but only temporarily. Just long enough to give him a taste of what he has been missing, realize that people always laugh at his... Read more

The Face on the Milk Carton

Janie Johnson (Face on the Milk Carton): Book #1

By: Caroline B. Cooney
Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan
Length: 5 hours 17 minutes

When 15-year-old Janie Johnson sees her own face in the missing children box on a milk carton, her world begins to blur. Was she kidnapped when she was a baby? Who are her parents? And who are Mr. and Mrs. Johnson? Janie's search for the answers will lead her back twelve years into memories of another house, another family, another life. Her... Read more

Go Tell It on the Mountain

By: James Baldwin
Narrated by: Adam Lazarre-White
Length: 8 hours 44 minutes

One of the most brilliant and provocative American writers of the twentieth century chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy’s spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention in this “truly extraordinary” novel (Chicago Sun-Times).James Baldwin’s stunning first novel is now an American classic. With startling realism that brings Harlem and the... Read more

The House on Mango Street

By: Sandra Cisneros
Narrated by: Sandra Cisneros
Length: 2 hours 17 minutes

In hardcover for the first time--on the tenth anniversary of its initial publication--the greatly admired and bestselling book about a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous, this novel depicts a new American landscape through its multiple characters. Read more

The Bluest Eye

By: Toni Morrison
Narrated by: Toni Morrison
Length: 7 hours 5 minutes

“Toni Morrison was a visionary. This, her first novel, was my first foray into her work, and I found it approachable, yet deep with meaning. It borrows its structure from a children’s Dick and Jane story, which Toni reads like a haunting incantation. Her narration of the entire book is flawless and stunning, like the text itself. The novel... Read more

We Are the Ants

By: Shaun David Hutchinson
Narrated by: Gibson Frazier
Length: 9 hours 13 minutes

A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021)

From the “author to watch” (Kirkus Reviews) of The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley comes an “equal parts sarcastic and profound” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) novel about a teenage boy who must decide whether or not the world is worth saving.

Henry Denton has spent years being periodically abducted by... Read more

Dear Martin

By: Nic Stone
Narrated by: Dion Graham
Length: 4 hours 32 minutes

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WILLIAM C. MORRIS AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE’S 100 BEST YA BOOKS OF ALL TIME
 
After a traffic stop turns violent at the hands of the police, a young Black teen grapples with racism—and what it means for his future. Critically acclaimed author Nic Stone boldly tackles America’s troubled history with race... Read more

Monday's Not Coming

By: Tiffany D. Jackson
Narrated by: Imani Parks
Length: 10 hours 6 minutes

“This heartbreaking, mind-bending thriller reads like truth: Monday Charles, a young black girl who lives in poverty, whose care has been shifted from one agency to another until no one knows who is supposed be looking out for her, disappears at the beginning of a long, hot, DC summer. But only her best friend Claudia registers her disappearance.... Read more

All American Boys

By: Jason Reynolds & Brendan Kiely
Narrated by: Guy Lockard & Keith Nobbs
Length: 6 hours 35 minutes

A 2016 Coretta Scott King Author Honor book, and recipient of the Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature.

In this New York Times bestselling novel, two teens—one black, one white—grapple with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country bitterly divided... Read more

Nineteen Minutes

A novel

By: Jodi Picoult
Narrated by: Carol Monda
Length: 21 hours 3 minutes

Jodi Picoult, bestselling author of My Sister's Keeper and Small Great Things pens her most riveting book yet, with a startling and poignant story about the devastating aftermath of a small-town tragedy.

Sterling is an ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens--until the day its complacency is shattered by a school shooting. Josie... Read more

Beloved

By: Toni Morrison
Narrated by: Toni Morrison
Length: 12 hours 2 minutes

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A spellbinding novel that transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. With a new afterword by the author. 

This "brutally powerful, mesmerizing story” (People) is an unflinchingly look into the abyss of slavery, from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner.

Sethe... Read more

The Hate U Give

By: Angie Thomas
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 11 hours 50 minutes

“This bestselling, powerful young adult novel about social justice and one teen girl's effort to fight for what is right, will leave you breathless. The narration by Bahni Turpin is hands down the best I've ever heard. This is such an important book it should be required reading for life in general. Or listening. Definitely listening. Read more

Out of Darkness

By: Ashley Hope Pérez
Narrated by: Benita Robledo & Lincoln Hoppe
Length: 12 hours 30 minutes

"This is East Texas, and there's lines. Lines you cross, lines you don't cross. That clear?" 

New London, Texas. 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them. They know the people who enforce them. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it... Read more

The Hill We Climb

An Inaugural Poem for the Country

By: Amanda Gorman
Narrated by: Amanda Gorman & Oprah Winfrey
Length: 9 minutes

Amanda Gorman’s powerful and historic poem “The Hill We Climb,” read at President Joe Biden’s inauguration

“Stunning.” —CNN 
“Dynamic.” —NPR
“Deeply rousing and uplifting.” —Vogue


On January 20, 2021, Amanda Gorman became the sixth and youngest poet to deliver a poetry reading at a presidential inauguration. Taking the stage after the 46th... Read more

New Kid

By: Jerry Craft
Narrated by: Jesus Del Orden, Nile Bullock, Robin Miles, Guy Lockard, Peyton Lusk, Rebecca Soler, Dan Bittner, Phoebe Strole, Marc Thompson, Miles Harvey & Ron Butler
Length: 1 hour 58 minutes

2020 Audie Awards® Finalist—Middle GradeWinner of the Newbery Medal, Coretta Scott King Author Award, and Kirkus Prize for Young Readers’ Literature, and an Audie Award finalist!
An original full-cast audio adaptation of the graphic novel from award-winning author-illustrator Jerry Craft, performed by the author with Jesus Del Orden, Nile... Read more

Blended

By: Sharon M. Draper
Narrated by: Sharon M. Draper
Length: 5 hours 41 minutes

“It's always a treat when an author reads her own work. Sharon Draper is marvelous! Isabella, Blended's protagonist, shines through Draper's voice in this thought-provoking and heart-warming tale about a young girl torn between worlds. Read more

The 1619 Project

A New Origin Story

By: Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman & Jake Silverstein
Narrated by: Nikole Hannah-Jones & Full Cast
Length: 18 hours 56 minutes

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A dramatic expansion of a groundbreaking work of journalism, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • NPR • Marie Claire
 
In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of... Read more

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

By: Erika L. Sánchez
Narrated by: Kyla Garcia
Length: 9 hours 40 minutes

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “stunning” (America Ferrera) YA novel about a teenager coming to terms with losing her sister and finding herself amid the pressures, expectations, and stereotypes of growing up in a Mexican American home.

“Alive and crackling—a gritty tale wrapped in a page-turner. ”—The New York Times

Perfect Mexican daughters... Read more