The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars came out in 2012 and quickly became one of the biggest young adult hits of its decade. It is a love story between two teenagers with cancer, and it was later turned into a film. Its sad subject has not kept it away from school boards and library committees.

Why would anyone challenge a cancer love story?

The complaints are about content, not plot. Parents and committees have pointed to sex, crude language and the book’s focus on death. The loudest argument has been about age: whether a story like this belongs in front of middle schoolers.

What did Riverside’s committee decide?

In 2014, a book reconsideration committee in California’s Riverside Unified School District voted 6–1 to pull the novel from the district’s middle schools. A parent whose daughter was reading it had objected that it was wrong for readers aged 11 to 13. All three copies at Frank Augustus Miller Middle School came off the shelves. High school libraries in the district kept the book.

Did the fight reach public libraries?

It did, nine years later. In 2023, the Hamilton East Public Library in Fishers, Indiana, moved the book out of its teen section and onto the adult shelves under a new collection policy. Green lives in Indiana, and he criticized the decision in public. As pressure built, the library’s board paused the policy.

Is it still easy to get hold of?

Yes. Every one of these cases was a local call, and the book stays on sale. Some libraries, such as the Indianapolis Public Library, circulate all of Green’s titles.

Its path looks a lot like that of other YA books under pressure. Ellen Hopkins’s verse novel about an addict’s children has been pulled from school libraries over drug use and sex, while Kobabe’s graphic memoir sits at the top of ALA’s challenge lists. You can follow the rest of them in the book bans list.