Hunger Games Climbs List of Most-Challenged Books

The Hunger Games film crossed the $300 million mark at the North American box office this weekend, but the books that started the craze got their own distinction on Monday: The American Library Association reported that the young-adult trilogy was the No. 3 most-challenged work in U.S. libraries last year.

The Associated Press reports that the first book appeared on the list at No. 5 last year, when anticipation for the film began to ramp up, with complaints about sexuality and violence. This year, the entire trilogy made the cut, and the complaints got much more elaborate, including concerns that the books are "anti-ethnic," "anti-family," and "occult/satanic."

The AP notes that last year, Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins said she wasn’t surprised by the challenges given the level of violence in the book, though she did not comment Monday on the new challenges cited in the ALA’s report.

The ALA releases a report on banned and challenged books every year ahead of Banned Books Week, held in September. Reports on challenged books were down about 6 percent this year. The most-challenged books were Lauren Myracle’s ttyl and its sequels, because of sexual content; last-year’s most-challenged book, the gay penguin story And Tango Makes Three, dropped from the list altogether for the first time since 2006. 

Here's the top 10 list for 2011's most-challenged books:

1) ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle; 2) The Color of Earth (series), by Kim Dong Hwa; 3) The Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collins; 4) My Mom's Having a Baby! A Kid's Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy, by Dori Hillestad Butler; 5) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie; 6) Alice (series), by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor; 7) Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley; 8) What My Mother Doesn't Know, by Sonya Sones; 9) Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily Von Ziegesar; 10) To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

You can find previous years' lists here.