12 Great YA Books to Read to Your Favorite Kid During Banned Books Week

They’re what? They’re WIZARDS?! Gasp! SATANISTS!

Challenged due to its potentially scary content. Here’s the thing: Fear is good! It teaches us when to be careful—when to watch our backs. I’ve joked about how weird Roald Dahl is before, but I still read his stuff voraciously as a kid. It’s not possible to go through life avoiding every potentially scary thing out there. Why would you want to teach kids to start trying to do just that at such a young age?

Criticized for dealing with puberty and religious indecision. Also, a woman apparently called Blume a Communist in the early ‘80s, which started her whole battle with the censors. Note that no connection to Communism has ever been found in her books.

The controversy over these books kind of makes me laugh: Highly religious Christians think it’s atheist; die-hard atheists think it’s Christian; and truthfully, it’s way more complicated than just picking one side or the other. Shades of grey are what keep the world interesting.

:Apparently some people think that the poem “How Not To Have To Dry The Dishes” encourages messiness and disobedience. Also, “Little Abigail and the Beautiful Pony” features a little girl who dies after her parents refuse to buy her a pony. I wonder what the people who objected to these relatively tame poems would have to say if they read, say, Struwwelpeter?

This is the first dystopian novel I ever read—I think I was maybe 7 or 8 at the time—and I’ve been fascinated by depictions of dystopian futures in all forms of storytelling ever since. Yes, it deals with puberty, sex, and death, and yes, the adults in this world are not always right. But ignoring these things doesn’t make them non-issues.

The Great Gilly Hopkins deals with complicated subject matter—its main character, the titular Gilly, is a foster child—and of course, there are all sorts of thorny subjects that go along with that, including Gilly’s use of nasty language and her difficult demeanor. I guess kids aren’t allowed to have troubled childhoods anymore?

Criticized because of the violence, because of the possibility of sex hanging over numerous characters and situations, and because of its being “unsuited to its age group.” Whatever that means.

Criticized for its references to witches and crystal balls, for the fact that it allegedly challenges religious beliefs, and for its inclusion of Jesus within a list of great artists, philosophers, scientists, and religious leaders. A) They’re not actually witches; B) It’s a science-fictional crystal ball, not a magical one; and C) What? Jesus wasn’t a great philosopher in addition to being a great religious leader?

Challenged for how it deals with drugs, homosexuality, sex, and suicide. But really, every high school student needs to read The Perks of Being a Wallflower. You just have to.

This one has gotten into all kinds of trouble because of its violent content and freakish illustrations. And yeah, I’ll admit that the pictures TERRIFIED me as a kid (and no, I’m not any fonder of them as an adult). But the stories? They’re all old urban legends. They’re the sorts of tales that have been told around campfires to kids for generations. What’s the problem?

For some reason, this picture book often gets given a Freudian reading. No idea why. This probably says more about the people who see it that way than it does about the kids who read it.