The Outsiders by S E Hinton 🔖🔖🔖🔖

First published April 24, 1967 

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Literary awards: Books I Loved Best Yearly Awards for Secondary 1991, Margaret A Edwards Award 1988

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The Outsiders is about two weeks in the life of a 14-year-old boy. The novel tells the story of Ponyboy Curtis and his struggles with right and wrong in a society in which he believes that he is an outsider. According to Ponyboy, there are two kinds of people in the world: greasers and socs. A soc (short for "social") has money, can get away with just about anything, and has an attitude longer than a limousine. A greaser, on the other hand, always lives on the outside and needs to watch his back. Ponyboy is a greaser, and he's always been proud of it, even willing to rumble against a gang of socs for the sake of his fellow greasers--until one terrible night when his friend Johnny kills a soc. The murder gets under Ponyboy's skin, causing his bifurcated world to crumble and teaching him that pain feels the same whether a soc or a greaser. (Source: goodreads) 

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I read this as a teenager, or I watched the movie; I am not sure which. I do know my mom hated it and would not let us read it. My foster sister got in so much trouble when she did so! 

As an adult, I enjoyed it. I could tell it was written by a young woman as it had a naive tone. It had a good message, yet this was a bit heavy when it may have actually been okay to not make it so obvious but allow the reader to pick up on their own. The characters were good and well-done. 

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Why was this banned?  Violence, profanity, too depressing, glorified violence, portrayal of a non-traditional family.

My take: 

Violence - yes. Teenagers and young adults participate in fighting as rival "gangs" ranging from punching, kicking, using found items as weapons such as bottles or pipes, switchblades, and guns. 

Profanity - not a one, unless you consider "golly" to be profanity. Profanity is discussed and stated that it was used in comments, yet the book does not use them. 

Too depressing - spoiler: characters die 

Glorified violence - I think this misses one of the entire points of this story.

Portrayal of a non-traditional family - meaning a young man raising his brothers because their parents died recently in a car accident?  Or a character being raised by a single mom? Horrors (insert sarcasm).

Would I want my kid reading this? Sure. He already has as required reading in 8th grade. I was fine with that.