Illustration of a chopping block with books stacked on top, an axe embedded in the books, and the words "Books On The Chopping Block" written on the chopping block in a field with mountains and cloudy sky in the background.

Books on the Chopping Block

Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Books on the Chopping Block is our annual 60-minute performance of dramatic readings of short excerpts taken from these books. City Lit has teamed up with the ALA in celebration of Banned Books Week since 2006, performing at special events, libraries and bookstores in and around Chicago... and virtually this year.​​

City Lit Executive Artistic Director Brian Pastor says, “The freedom to read is essential to a civilized society. For many marginalized communities, the freedom to read represents the freedom to be themselves. City Lit is proud to continue its BOOKS ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK program at a time when attempts at book banning are at an all-time high. We are pleased to ally ourselves with the American Library Association in this important work.”​

All the books in the list are available from your local library and to buy from Bookshop.org (if you click on the books below and buy copies City Lit gets a small cut!).

This year’s events

We will be adding events all the time, so check back!

Last year’s events are listed below as a reference…

Monday, October 6th, 2025
DePaul Theatre School, Lobby 11:30-1:30pm
2350 N Racine Ave.,
Chicago, IL 60614

Tuesday, October 7th, 2025
Wilmette Public Library: 6:30pm
1242 Wilmette Ave.,
Wilmette, IL 60091

Wednesday, October 8th, 2025
Northbrook Public Library. 7:00pm.
1201 Cedar Lane,
Northbrook, IL

Saturday, October 11th, 2025
Edgewater Library Branch. 2:00pm.
6000 N Broadway,
Chicago, IL 60660

 
 
 
 

Click on the books below to buy from Bookshop.org (City Lit gets a small cut!).

Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2025

See the Top 11 List HERE and ALA report here

Number of books challenged in 2025 was just over 4,235 which is the second highest ever (the record of 4,240 was in 2023). For context in 2018 only 258 books were challenged.

  • Of the unique titles challenged in 2025, 1,671 (39%) represent the lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ people and people of color.

  • In 2025, 92% of all book challenges were initiated by pressure groups, government officials and decision makers, up from 72% in 2024. Less than 3% of challenges originated from individual parents.

Here is this year's list»

  • Patricia McCormick: Thirteen-year-old Lakshmi leaves her poor mountain home in Nepal thinking that she is to work in the city as a maid only to find that she has been sold into the sex slave trade in India and that there is no hope of escape. (Fiction, Young Adult)

  • Stephen Chbosky: A coming of age novel about Charlie, a freshman in high school who is a wallflower, shy and introspective, and very intelligent. He deals with the usual teen problems, but also with the suicide of his best friend. (Fiction, Young Adult)

  • Maia Kobabe: In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears… (Non-Fiction, Young Adult)

  • Sarah J. Maas: The long path to the throne has only just begun for Aelin Galathynius. Loyalties have been broken and bought, friends have been lost and gained, and those who possess magic find themselves at odds with those who don’t. As the kingdoms of Erilea fracture around her, enemies must become allies if Aelin is to keep those she loves from falling to the dark forces poised to claim her world. (Fiction, Young Adult)

  • Malinda Lo: Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father–despite his hard-won citizenship–Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day (Fiction, Young Adult)

  • Ellen Hopkins: Tricks is a young adult verse novel by Ellen Hopkins, released in August 2009. It tells the converging narratives of five troubled teenage protagonists. (Fiction, Young Adult)

  • Sarah J. Maas: Dragged to a treacherous magical land she only knows about from stories, Feyre discovers that her captor is not an animal, but Tamlin, a High Lord of the faeries. As her feelings toward him transform from hostility to a fiery passion, the threats against the faerie lands grow. Feyre must fight to break an ancient curse or she will lose Tamlin forever. (Fiction, Young Adult)

  • John Green: Sixteen-year-old Miles’ first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal car crash.  (Fiction, Young Adult)

  • Anthony Burgess: In Anthony Burgess’s influential nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, a teen who talks in a fantastically inventive slang that evocatively renders his and his friends’ intense reaction against their society. Dazzling and transgressive, A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil and the meaning of human freedom. (Fiction, Adult)

  • Ellen Hopkins: Sixteen-year-old identical twin daughters of a district court judge and a candidate for the United States House of Representatives, Kaeleigh and Raeanne Gardella desperately struggle with secrets that have already torn them and their family apart (Fiction, Young Adult)

  • Jennifer L. Armentrout: Eighteen-year-old Trinity Marrow may be going blind, but she can see and communicate with ghosts and spirits. Her unique gift is part of a secret so dangerous that she’s been in hiding for years in an isolated compound fiercely guarded by Wardens—gargoyle shape-shifters who protect humankind from demons. If the demons discover the truth about Trinity, they’ll devour her, flesh and bone, to enhance their own powers. When Wardens from another clan arrive with disturbing reports that something out there is killing both demons and Wardens, Trinity’s safe world implodes. Not the least because one of the outsiders is the most annoying and fascinating person she’s ever met. Zayne has secrets of his own that will upend her world yet again—but working together becomes imperative once demons breach the compound and Trinity’s secret comes to light. To save her family and maybe the world, she’ll have to put her trust in Zayne. But all bets are off as a supernatural war is unleashed… (Fiction, Young Adult)