Book bans in public schools continued to rise during the first half of the current school year, according to a report released Tuesday by PEN America, a free speech organization.
From July to December 2023, PEN found that more than 4,300 books were removed from schools in 23 states — a number that exceeded the number of bans from the entire previous academic year.
The rise in book bans has accelerated in recent years, driven by conservative groups and new laws and regulations that limit the kinds of books children can access. As of summer 2021, PEN has been tracking book removals in 42 states and found cases in both Republican- and Democratic-held districts.
The numbers probably fail to capture the full scale of book removals. PEN compiles its figures based on news reports, public records requests and publicly available data, but many deductions go unreported.
Here are some of the report’s key findings.
Book removals continue to accelerate
Book bans are not new in the United States. Schools and public libraries have long had procedures for dealing with complaints, often filed by parents concerned about their children’s reading material.
But today’s wave stands out in its scope. Censorship efforts have become increasingly organized and politicized, led by conservative groups such as Moms for Liberty and Utah Parents United, which have pushed for legislation regulating the content of library collections. Since PEN began tracking book bans, it has counted more than 10,000 cases of books being removed from schools. Many of the targeted titles include LGBTQ characters or deal with race and racism, according to PEN.
Florida had the largest number of moves
Florida schools had the most book bans last semester, with 3,135 books removed in 11 school districts. Within Florida, the bulk of the bans took place in Escambia County Public Schools, where more than 1,600 books were removed to ensure they did not violate a state education law that prohibits books that depict or refer to sexual behavior. (In the scan, some schools removed dictionaries and encyclopedias.)
Book removals have soared in Florida because of several state laws passed by Gov. Ron DeSandis and a Republican-controlled Legislature aimed in part at regulating reading and educational materials.
Florida has also become a testing ground for book ban tactics across the country, said Kasey Meehan, program director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read Program.
“Somehow, what happens in Florida incubates and then spreads nationally,” he said. “We see how very harmful legislation that has led to so much of the banning crisis in Florida has been replicated, or provisions of these laws have been proposed or enacted in states like South Carolina and Iowa and Idaho.”
Books depicting sexual assault are increasingly targeted
With the rise of legislation and policies aimed at banning sexually charged books from school libraries, books depicting sexual assault are being challenged with increasing frequency. PEN found that nearly 20 percent of the books banned during the 2021-2023 school year were works that dealt with rape and sexual assault.
Last year, several books dealing with sexual violence were removed from the West Ada School District in Idaho, including a graphic novel version of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Rupi Kaur’s poetry collection “Milk and Honey,” the Jaycee Dugard’s memoir, “A Stolen Life,” and Amy Reed’s young adult novel, “The Nowhere Girls.”
In Collier County, Florida, public school officials — aiming to comply with a new law restricting access to books depicting “sexual behavior” — pulled hundreds of books from shelves last year, including “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” by Zora Neale Hurston? A Time To Kill, by John Grisham. and “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison.
A movement to counter book bans is growing
Opponents of book bans — including parents, students, free speech organizations and libraries, booksellers and authors — are leading an organized effort to stop book removals, often arguing that book bans violate the First Amendment, which protects the right to access information.
Last fall, hundreds of students in Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District staged a walkout to protest challenges to more than 50 books. At a school board meeting last October in Laramie County, Wyo., students held a “read-in” to silently protest book bans. Elsewhere, students have formed banned book clubs, held marches and set up free community shelves in their cities to make titles more accessible.
Legislatures in California and Illinois have passed “ban the books” laws. Several states, including Texas and Florida, have filed lawsuits in an effort to overturn legislation that made it easier to ban the books.
“In almost every case that comes up, the judges have found these laws unconstitutional,” said Jonathan Friedman, who oversees PEN America’s Free Speech programs in the US. But Friedman said it could take years for the laws to be challenged and potentially overturned, and he noted that new legislation continues to proliferate.
“I don’t get the sense that this issue is going to go away,” he said.
