The novel maintains a tricky balance while telling high-schooler Charlie's story, between hard-edged honesty and a message of reassurance, which might make it difficult to adapt to film in a way that values the sensibilities of its target audience. Underneath a sincere exploration of sexuality, drug use, and the grief and depression that fuel suicide, this epistolary coming-of-age story is instead much closer to a comforting embrace than something to fret over and, really, the "potentially banned" label only strengthens the resolve to seek out stories like this for their candor. Since being published in 1999, Stephen Chbosky's "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" has frequently loomed near the top of the ALA's "most challenged books" chart for situations and themes centering on young outsiders, enough to make conservative foreheads sweat.
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