I've read 28 of the books on that list and many of those were HUGE in shaping my childhood. Hello, Anastasia Krupnik? The Face on the Milk Carton? For the life of me, I still can't imagine why TFOTMC would be banned.
For anybody who's planning on using this list as suggested reading material
, you have to read the Alice books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. They are far and beyond any other books I have ever read about growing up, and I read TONS as a kid. I started reading them when I was 8 and my sister started reading them when she was 11, and now we're 20 and 17 but we still get them from the bookstore whenever a new one comes out. PRN has written about everything from anorexia to child abuse to adolescent crushes to racism to embarassing moments and so much more in those books, and I don't think there's ANYTHING that she didn't handle well.