Subject Guides: Featured Ebooks: Banned Books

Welcome

The theme for Banned Books Week 2023 is "Let Freedom Read." When we ban books, we're closing off readers to people, places, and perspectives. But when we stand up for stories, we unleash the power that lies inside every book. We liberate the array of voices that need to be heard and the scenes that need to be seen. Let freedom read! For more information about Banned Book Week and banned books in general, please visit the link provided. https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks

Contemporary Poetry Books

Odyssey

Widely regarded as one of the finest works of literature in the Western canon, Homer's Odyssey is a masterpiece of classical epic poetry. The tale follows the travels of the Greek hero Odysseus as he strives to return to his homeland after waging battle in the Trojan War. Long presumed dead after a 20-year absence, Odysseus finally returns to his native Ithaca and is forced to fight to resume his long-lost life and save his family from ruin. The Odyssey is a can't-miss experience for cultured readers.

Twelfth Night

Another case of mistaken identity from the king of the plot twist, Twelfth Night, tells the tale of the beautiful young Viola, who is separated from her twin brother, Sebastian when their ship is lost at sea. Believing Sebastian to be dead, Viol poses as a man and enters service with Duke Orisino. When Olivia, the woman that Orisino loves, falls for his messenger "boy" Viola, and she, in turn, falls for the Duke, the stage is set for a classic Shakespearean love triangle.

Moby Dick

The itinerant sailor Ishmael begins a voyage on the whaling ship Pequod whose captain, Ahab, wishes to exact revenge upon the whale Moby-Dick, who destroyed his last ship and took his leg. As they search for the savage white whale, Ishmael questions all aspects of life. The story is woven in complex, lyrical language and uses many theatrical forms, such as stage direction and soliloquy. It is considered the exemplar of American Romanticism, and one of the greatest American novels of all time.

Dracula

While Bram Stoker didn't invent the vampire, his 1897 novel Dracula has been the defining force in the popularity and evolution of vampire mythology today. The story of its infamous antagonist Count Dracula is told in the form of letters and diary entries.

The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm

For the first time, The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm makes available in English all 156 stories from the 1812 and 1815 editions. These narrative gems, newly translated and brought together in one beautiful book, are accompanied by sumptuous new illustrations from award-winning artist Andrea Dezsö. From "The Frog King" to "The Golden Key," wondrous worlds unfold--heroes and heroines are rewarded, weaker animals triumph over the strong, and simple bumpkins prove themselves not so simple after all. Esteemed fairy tale scholar, Jack Zipes, offers accessible translations that retain the spare description and engaging storytelling style of the originals. Indeed this is what makes the tales from the 1812 and 1815 editions unique--they reflect diverse voices, rooted in oral traditions, that are absent from the Grimms' later, more embellished collections of tales. Zipes's introduction gives important historical context, and the book includes the Grimms' prefaces and notes. A delight to read, The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm presents these peerless stories to a whole new generation of readers.

James and the Giant Peach

Roald Dahl was a champion of the underdog and all things little--in this case, an orphaned boy oppressed by two nasty, self-centered aunts. How James escapes his miserable life with the horrible aunts and becomes a hero is a Dahlicious fantasy of the highest order. You will never forget resourceful little James and his new family of magically overgrown insects--a ladybug, a spider, a grasshopper, a glowworm, a silkworm, and the chronic complainer, a centipede with a hundred gorgeous shoes. Their adventures aboard a luscious peach as large as a house take them across the Atlantic Ocean, through waters infested with peach-eating sharks and skies inhabited by malevolent Cloudmen, to a ticker-tape parade in New York City. This happily ever after contemporary fairy tale is a twentieth-century classic that every child deserves to know.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz chronicles the adventure of Dorothea in the land of Oz. A cyclone picks her up from her Kansas home, where she lives with her aunt and uncle, and deposits her in the fantastical land. She begins a journey along the yellow brick road to seek help from the Wizard of Oz. On her way, she meets her fair share of witches (good and bad) and a scarecrow without a brain, a tinman without a heart, and a cowardly lion. They travel together to the Emerald City to seek an audience with the wizard.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Through the Looking-Glass; What Alice Found There

Bored with reading a book with no pictures, Alice looks up and sees a white rabbit in a waistcoat. Curious, she follows. Tumbling down a rabbit hole after him, Alice leaves the rational world behind and enters a world of nonsense. A drink that makes you shrink and a cake that makes you grow, a floating cat that can turn invisible, a tea party stuck in a perpetual time loop, and an angry queen of playing cards all make Alice's head spin as she works her way through her confusing surroundings. The Mad Hatter, the Ugly Duchess, the Mock Turtle, the Queen of Hearts, and the Cheshire Cat are characters each more eccentric than the last, and that could only have come from Lewis Carroll, the master of sublime nonsense.

The Glass Castle

The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who hated the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family. The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered. The Glass Castle is truly astonishing--a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

The African American leader discusses his political philosophy and reveals details of his life, shedding light on the ideas that enabled him to gain the allegiance of a still-growing percentage of the black population.

The Hill We Climb

The instant #1 New York Times bestseller and #1 USA Today bestseller Amanda Gorman's electrifying and historic poem "The Hill We Climb." 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 president of the United States, Joe Biden, Gorman captivated the nation and brought hope to viewers around the globe with her call for unity and healing. Her poem "The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country" can now be cherished in this special gift edition, perfect for any reader looking for some inspiration. Including an enduring foreword by Oprah Winfrey, this remarkable keepsake celebrates the promise of America and affirms the power of poetry.

Ernest Hemingway's the Sun Also Rises

The esteemed critic Harold Bloomaputs The Sun Also Rises on a short list of modern American novels that appears to endure. Ernest Hemingway's classic tale hinges on issues of conflict, masculinity, and desire in its indelible portrait of lives caught in the grip of the Spanish civil war. This new edition of critical essays in Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations series is intended for in-depth study and features a chronology of Hemingway's life, a bibliography of his works, and an index.

The Red Badge of Courage

Hailed as one of American literature's most influential works, The Red Badge of Courage has a young recruit facing the trials and cruelties of war. Stephen Crane's 1895 novel is set in the American Civil War. Private Henry Fleming flees from battle and his battalion, considering all lost. Stumbling upon injured soldiers, he feels the shame of deserting and of not possessing the "red badge of courage", the wounds of war. But later when Henry rejoins his regiment and is ordered into a hopeless battle, he finds a chance to finally prove his courage as a man.

All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I. The book describes the German soldier's extreme physical and mental stress during the war and the detachment from civilian life felt by many of these soldiers upon returning home from the front. Beautifully illustrated, this classic tale will capture children's interest and spark their imagination inspiring a lifelong love of literature and reading.

Leaves of Grass

Leaves of Grass is a collection of poems by Walt Whitman originally published in 1855 at the poet's expense. Criticized when first released for Whitman's use of free verse and his rather racy depictions of love and the senses, Leaves of Grass is a celebration of the human form, the material world, and nature.

The Call of the Wild

The Call of the Wild is Jack London's most popular book and is considered by many to be his best. Telling the story of Buck, a domesticated dog whose wild instincts begin to kick in while serving as a sled dog in the treacherous Yukon. The novel's tone is often dark, and despite being considered juvenile literature by some, it portrays much violence and cruelty. The Call of the Wild was followed in 1906 by White Fang with its mirroring plot of a wild wolf becoming domesticated by a miner.

The Scarlet Letter

In the puritanical Boston of the 17th Century, a woman gives birth after committing adultery. That woman, Hester Prynne, choses to create a new life for herself in the face of adversity rather than succumb to what is expected of her. She will not name the father. Her decision opens up the tension between religious life and the true grace of God, and between personal guilt, religious sin and legal guilt. The novel is prefaced by a "real" account of the author finding notes on a case similar to Hestor's in a Custom House, from which he fashioned the story. The preface is to be read as fictional.

The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Stories

This collection of sixteen short stories includes some of Edgar Allan Poe's most boundary-pushing and blood-chilling work. Selections range from "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," which launched the detective mystery genre, to "The Tell-Tale Heart," a Gothic classic about a murderer's overwhelming guilt. Discover tales of creatures that return from the dead, ghastly diseases that claim their victims within half an hour, and secret messages that lead to buried treasure. This curated compilation contains unabridged versions of the American author's finest tales; the short stories were originally published between 1832 and 1849.

The Jungle

Jurgis and his family move to Chicago from Lithuania to find a better life. But what they find instead are abysmal working conditions, corrupt legal systems, and chronic poverty. The family gets jobs in Chicago's meatpacking district, Packingtown, and works long hours for low pay. Jurgis is injured on the job and isn't given workers' compensation. His wife is raped by her boss and forced into prostitution. As his family suffers through hardship after hardship, Jurgis wonders if bringing them to America was a huge mistake. First published in 1906, this is an unabridged version of Upton Sinclair's muckraking novel criticizing the exploitation of Chicago's immigrants. The horrifying descriptions of the health violations of the early 20th-century meatpacking industry inspired the groundwork legislation for today's Food and Drug Administration.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

The novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe, focuses on a slave named Uncle Tom to weave a portrayal of the cruelty of slavery, finding redemption in the idea that Christian love can conquer something so destructive. It turned out to be the bestselling novel of the nineteenth century, helping to further the abolitionist cause after publication in 1852. At the start of the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln met Stowe and is said to have declared, "So this is the little lady who made this big war." The novel had a major effect on people's attitudes toward slavery when it was released.

Beloved

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 was born enslaved and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later, she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died namelessly and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. "A masterwork.... Wonderful.... I can't imagine American literature without it." --John Leonard, Los Angeles Times

The Invisible Man

The mysterious Griffin arrives at a picturesque English inn during a snowstorm, swaddled in bandages that cover his face and with his eyes hidden behind dark glasses. His odd get-up and irascible behavior intrigue the locals, who believe him to be the victim of an accident. However, the true reason for Griffin's outfit is far stranger: underneath those clothes, he is completely invisible. As the cause of Griffin's state of transparency is revealed, his nefarious and destructive intentions become clear. One of the foundational texts of science fiction, The Invisible Man, has inspired numerous film and TV adaptations and remains chilling in its depiction of scientific experimentation gone wrong.

The Great Gatsby Original Classic Edition

Long regarded as one of the greatest American novels of the twentieth century, The Great Gatsby expresses many of the central themes of the American myth: romance, love, the quest for wealth and status, loneliness, and corruption. The novel follows Jay Gatsby, a mysterious self-made man, in his desperate quest for the love of the beguiling Daisy Buchanan--and for a place in the highest ranks of society. Gatsby's fate reflects the emptiness and disappointment that come from his search.

Tarzan of the Apes

Abandoned to his fate when his English parents die in the African jungle, a baby boy is rescued and reared by a loving ape foster mother. Conquering the savage laws of the wilderness, Tarzan grows into a mighty warrior and becomes the leader of his tribe of apes until he encounters humans. An expedition of white treasure hunters has entered his jungle kingdom, accompanied by the beautiful Jane Porter. Tarzan's primitive heart is struck and he determines to become