Banned Book Club @ Wollaston Library (Bi-Monthly)

This new bi-monthly book discussion will feature frequently challenged and banned books. Every other month, join us at the Wollaston library to discuss a book that has had frequent challenges in libraries and other institutions across the United States. Copies of the book will be available at the Wollaston Library starting one month prior of each book discussion meeting.
To learn more about 2024 Book Clubs at the Main Library, visit here.

February 28: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark HaddonA modern classic—both poignant and funny—about a boy with autism who sets out to solve the M**der of a neighbor’s dog and discovers unexpected truths about himself and the world. Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. This improbable story of Christopher’s quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.
April 24: Maus (Graphic Novel) by Art SpiegelmanA brutally moving work of art—widely hailed as the greatest graphic novel ever written—Maus recounts the chilling experiences of the author’s father during the Holocaust, with Jews drawn as wide-eyed mice and Nazis as menacing cats. Maus is a haunting tale within a tale, weaving the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father into an astonishing retelling of one of history’s most unspeakable tragedies. It is an unforgettable story of survival and a disarming look at the legacy of trauma.
June 26: The Hate U Give by Angie ThomasStarr Carter is constantly switching between two worlds — the poor, mostly black neighborhood where she lives and the wealthy, mostly white prep school that she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is soon shattered when she witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend at the hands of a police officer. Facing pressure from all sides of the community, Starr must find her voice and decide to stand up for what’s right.
August 28: The Things They Carried by Tim O’BrienThe Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere – from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing – it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing.
October 23: Fun Home (Graphic Memoir) by Alison BechdelAlison Bechdel’s groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir that charts her fraught relationship with her late father.
Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the “Fun Home.” It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve. In her hands, personal history becomes a work of amazing subtlety and power, written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and heartbreaking detail.

Host or Publisher Thomas Crane Public Library