All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy | Banned Book Project

All the Pretty Horses (1992) Synopsis

All the Pretty Horses tells of young John Grady Cole, the last of a long line of Texas ranchers. Across the border, Mexico beckons—beautiful and desolate, rugged and cruelly civilized. With two companions, he sets off on an idyllic, sometimes comic adventure to a place where dreams are paid for in blood. — Goodreads

All the Pretty Horses is the first volume in Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy.

Award Wins and Nominations

Winner, National Book Awards 1992 for Fiction.

Locations Challenged or Banned

Overland, Kansas: 2004 – Parents at the Blue Valley School System fought to remove 14 titles from five high school libraries and reading lists. Six hundred concerned citizens signed an online petition stating that the offending books didn’t comply with the school board’s policy that all materials be “absence of vulgar language, sexual explicitness or violent imagery that is gratuitously employed.” The challenged list of books included, The Bean Trees, Animal Dreams, The Awakening, The Bean Trees, Beloved, Black Boy, FallenAngels, Hot Zone, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Lords of Discipline, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Song of Solomon, Stotan, This Boy’s Life.

Reasons for Challenge or Ban

Sexual content, profanity, violence

References

Education Reporter, March 2003, p. 3. “Kansas Parents Organize to Improve High School Reading Lists.” https://www.phyllisschlafly.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2005_3-March-EdReporter.pdf

National Book Foundation. 1992 Winners. https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1992/