Lock 'Em Up: The Stories Behind 12 Banned Kids' Books

Bony-Legs is based on an old Russian folktale about a witch named Baba Yaga — aka Bony-Legs — who just loves to eat children. When a kindhearted little girl is captured by old Bony-Legs, the animals that she helped along her way repay the favor and help her escape. The book was banned due to its depictions of witchcraft and magic, apparently evil forces that children must not hear about. Scary? No doubt. But is this book any "worse" than the numerous other kids' books that feature plenty of magic, and even a witch or two? You decide!

A Light in the Attic is the classic collection of poems and drawings by beloved author Shel Silverstein. Right? Wrong. It was banned in 1993 at an elementary school in Florida because it "promotes disrespect, horror, and violence" and was one of the most banned books of the 1990s.

In January 2010, the Texas Board of Education banned Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? because the author has the same name, Bill Martin, as a Marxist theorist. Alas, the two men are in fact different people, and unlike some books, which do appear to have some serious political undertones, Brown Bear is in fact just about different-colored animals.

In 1977, cops across the United States joined forces to ban Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, a seemingly innocuous tale about a donkey who collects magic pebbles. The brouhaha resulted from the cops in the story being depicted as pigs (never mind that there were plenty of noncop pigs in the story, too).

The Captain Underpants series — comic-book-style stories about the adventures of two fourth-graders and their superhero principal — has the distinction of being one of the top 10 most frequently banned and challenged books in 2002, 2004, and 2005 "for offensive language and modeling bad behavior." Yes, there is a lot of potty talk in this series, but a Connecticut elementary school banned the books because officials thought that it was inspiring their fourth-graders to get into even more mischief.

As recently as 1990, Little Red Riding Hood was banned because "the presence of a bottle of wine in the young girl's basket condone[s] the use of alcohol."

A whimsical story about a little boy named Mikey who goes on nighttime adventures to the Milky Way, In the Night Kitchen is controversial because of little Mickey's choice of attire for much of the story: none. The little boy spends a decent amount of time sans pajamas, and the illustration of the young child's private parts has consistently earned this book a spot on "most frequently challenged books" lists since its publication in 1970.

The insanely popular teen and tween series The Hunger Games has been banned from libraries across the country due to the series's religious viewpoint and the age group it is targeted to.

Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved is on many schools' reading lists, but school districts in Michigan and Virginia tried to ban it due to "obscene" passages that address murder and rape during slavery.

On the list of Frequently Challenged Books for several consecutive years was Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. The book, about a 14-year-old Spokane Indian who is exploring his identity, was dinged for "offensive language; racism; religious viewpoint; and sexually explicit" text.