Top 11 Most Challenged Books 2025

High school freshman Charlie writes a series of letters, to whom we don't know. In them he details his life as a wallflower, struggling to fit in, finding comfort in an odd new circle of friends.

Summary: Maia Kobabe (who uses e/em/eir pronouns) writes this moving autobiography of finding eirself. Covering everything from  crushes, how to come out to family and the world at large, and explaining what it means to be non-binary and asexual. A wonderful memoir on what it means to find and live as your most authentic self.

This historical fiction is set in San Francisco, in 1954, when Chinese Americans and immigrants had to live under increased paranoia, racism, and suspicion for having Communist ideas. Lily is interested in discovering what’s outside her Chinatown home. Her parents warned her not to leave their immediate neighborhood, but Lily ventures forth to various places, such as the Telegraph Club, a lesbian bar. This is where she slowly discovers herself and a relationship with her first white friend, Kathleen. All of this means that Lily may end up in dangerous situations and more than she bargained for.

Ellen Hopkins’s style of free verse and difficult subject matter, which in this case deals with drugs, eating disorders, sexual abuse and other trauma, is played out in this haunting story of identical mirror image twins with very different personalities.