Why Contraband exists
Because the surest sign a book matters is that someone in power wants it gone.
Across the country, the books disappearing from school shelves share a pattern. They tend to be about the parts of American life some would rather not teach: slavery and its afterlife, the Holocaust and internment, the civil-rights movement, and the ordinary struggle of young people to be seen. They are, overwhelmingly, books by and about people of color, and books that ask readers to reckon with hard history.
Contraband collects those books and turns each one into a rigorous, standards-aligned learning room — vocabulary, evidence investigation, analysis, and discussion — so the response to “you can't read this” becomes “let's read it closely, and talk about what it's really saying.”
How we choose titles
Every book here meets three tests:
- Widely taught. A long-standing part of American grade 6–12 curricula, not a fringe pick.
- Actually challenged. Documented removals or challenges in real school districts.
- Worth the fight. It teaches real history, social justice, or identity with literary substance — the Anne Frank standard.
How the rooms are built
Each learning room uses the same engine as our sister project, PlotPoint: an Enter the Story overview, vocabulary practice, an evidence “Crack the Case” investigation, close-reading analysis, and an extension task — aligned in good faith to Common Core, with TEKS/ELPS flagged for local review.
⚠ Copyright — read this
Most challenged books are still under copyright. Contraband rooms are independent educational companions. They reproduce no text and invent no quotations — every activity is transformative analysis. Students need lawful access to their own copy of the book; we never host, link to, or replace it. Copyrighted rooms are built one at a time from publicly available information, and each ships with its title-specific companion disclaimer.
What we don't do
No logins, no accounts, no analytics, no data collection. Everything runs in the browser. We take no position on any individual family's choices for their own child — only on the removal of books from everyone's shelf.
Get involved
Teachers: if a book you love has been pulled and you want a room for it, that's the pipeline. Public-domain titles ship fast; copyrighted ones we build carefully from publicly available information so the analysis is accurate and quotation-free.
Resources & further reading
Contraband is one small effort. These organizations do the real work of defending the freedom to read:
- Books Unbanned — free digital library cards that give young readers access to books that have been banned in their own communities.
- American Library Association — Banned Books Week resources, censorship data, frequently-challenged book lists, graphics, and information about intellectual freedom.
- School Library Journal — ongoing reporting and resources about book challenges, intellectual freedom, school libraries, and censorship.
- Freadom Books — challenged-book resources and projects (such as Little Free Libraries) that put restricted books back into communities.
And the foundation under all of it: the freedom to read is a First Amendment freedom. Read the First Amendment, and learn about freedom of speech and freedom of the press.