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Robert Cormier's sexually explicit novel The Chocolate War and Robie H. Harris's primary school-level sex-education book It's Perfectly Normal get the dubious honor of heading the fiction and nonfiction lists of works attracting the most requests for removal or restriction from U.S. library collections and schools last year, according to ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom.
Released January 27, the 1998 list cites some 478 formal, written book complaints that were reported to ALA, down from the 1995 all-time high of 762; OIF Director Judith Krug notes that for every challenge documented by her office, as many as five more go unreported. She also said that, despite widespread concern about Internet content, the OIF has not heard of any challenges to specific Internet sites.
Compiled annually, OIF's most-challenged list names Judy Blume and John Steinbeck among the authors perennially targeted, along with relative newcomers Katherine Paterson, James Lincoln Collier, and Christopher Collier.
Posted February 1, 1999.
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