It’s Banned Books Week. There have always been books that people don’t like, find distasteful, wrong, etc. Some of these concerns are legitimate — there are distasteful books written every day.
Yet, an answer that seeks a state prohibition banning a book like Catcher in the Rye, for example, will always be excessive and illegitimate state authority. (I don’t find Catcher in the Rye distasteful, but I’m sure others do.) The answer to books one doesn’t like is to avoid them, their authors, and their publishers.
Here’s a map of book challenges and bans with data from the American Library Association:
View Book Bans and Challenges, 2007-2010 in a larger map
Book Bans and Challenges, 2007-2010
Hundreds of books are challenged in schools and libraries in the United States each year. A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, while a banning reflects the actual removal of those materials. The American Library Association (ALA) provides confidential support to teachers and librarians and tracks challenges that occur. ALA recorded 460 challenges in 2009 but estimates that this reflects only 20-25% of actual incidents, as most challenges are never reported.