Young Adult Novels

Myracle herself is quick to remind others that for every documented request to challenge or ban a book, 4 or 5 additional challenges go undocumented (Myracle, 2012). This results in only a few instances of censorship attempts being made public. The following is a list of some specific cases of Myracle’s works being challenged, banned, censored, or acknowledged as such:

• In 2007, the book was challenged at the William Floyd Middle School in Mastic, New York, for sexual situations and adult language. The book remained in the library, with a spokesperson commenting that the book deals with difficult topics without glorifying them (Banned books, n.d.). 

• In 2007, TTYL makes its first appearance on the American Library Association’s “10 Most Challenged Books” list. (Tango tops most challenged list, 2008). 

•  In 2009, TTYL was removed from the middle school libraries, and reshelved in the high school libraries, at the Red Rock Independent School District in Texas (Censorship Watch, 2009). -In 2009, TTYL, as well as the other books in the Internet Girls series, topped the list of the 10 most frequently challenged books as published by the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom (TTYL series tops 2009 list of challenged books, 2010). 

•  In 2010, TTYL was challenged at the Ponus Middle School in Norwalk, Connecticut. The challenge went to a five member review committee, who voted unanimously to keep the book in the library. The reasoning was that the library should present a wide variety of books; the overwhelmingly positive literary support for the book factored into this decision as well (Success stories, 2010). 

• In 2010, TTYL was challenged at the John Muir Middle School in Wausau, Wisconsin, on the grounds of sexually explicit content; the book remained (Banned books, n.d.). 

• In 2011, the Internet Girls series once again topped the list of most challenged books (Myracle, 2012). 

• In 2016, parents of students from Nassau County School District in Florida alerted the media when their children brought TTYL and TTFN home from the school library. Parents told the media that they hoped the books would be “done away with” and that more monitoring of the school library would occur (Avitable, 2016). 

•  Myracle states that a website named Virtue Alert sent out email directly stating that “Satan is on the rampage, and his name is Lauren Myracle” (Corbett, 2011). 

•  Myracle states that an email from a father named Chuck explained how he saw to it that his child’s school removed Lauren’s books from the accelerated reading program (Brannan, Chbosky, & Myracle, 2009).

Photo Reference
Harkleroad, T. (2017). Internet Girls Series. [digital image]. Uploaded directly to blog.