John Steinbeck banned the book from the county's publicly funded schools and libraries. It was burned in Salinas on two different occasions. In 2003, a school board in Mississippi banned it on the grounds of profanity. According to the American Library Association Steinbeck was one of the ten most frequently banned authors from 1990 to 2004, with "Of Mice and Men" ranking sixth out of 100 such books in the United States. The award of the 1962 Nobel Prize for Literature to Steinbeck was controversial in the United States. The award citation lauded Steinbeck "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as
John Steinbeck into the California Hall of Fame, located at the California Museum for History, Women and the Arts. His son, author Thomas Steinbeck, accepted the award on his behalf. To commemorate the 112th anniversary of Mr. Steinbeck's birthday on February 27, 2014, Google displayed an interactive doodle utilizing animation which included illustrations portraying scenes and quotes from several novels by the author. Steinbeck and his friend Ed Ricketts appear as a fictionalized characters in the 2016 novel, "Monterey Bay" about the founding of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, by Lindsay Hatton (Penguin Press). Steinbeck was affiliated to the St. Paul's Episcopal Church