Book bans skyrocketed by 200% during the 2023-2024 school year, with the challenges coming predominantly from far-right activists targeting stories of race, sexuality and gender identity.
There were 10,046 book bans in public K12 last school year, leading to the removal of 4,231 titles by 877 authors, illustrators and translators, according to the final 2023-24 count by PEN America, an anti-censorship organization. The bans occurred in 29 states and 220 districts.
Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes, a 2007 novel about a school shooting, was the most commonly banned book, the organization found. Picoult told PEN America that she doesn’t consider having the most banned book in the country any kind of badge of honor but rather a call for alarm.
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“Nineteen Minutes is banned not because it’s about a school shooting, but because of a single page that depicts a date rape and uses anatomically correct words for the human body. It is not gratuitous or salacious, and it is not—as the book banners claim—porn,” the best-selling author said. “In fact, hundreds of kids have told me that reading Nineteen Minutes stopped them from committing a school shooting, or showed them they were not alone in feeling isolated.”
The next most banned titles were: Looking for Alaska by John Green, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, Sold by Patricia McCormick and Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher.
Books bans become more severe
PEN America, which has tracked nearly 16,000 book bans since 2021, also warned that censorship is growing in severity. Last school year, 43% of the bans completely prohibited access to books, without review or exceptions. Total bans accounted for only 27% of the censorship activity in previous years.
Along with themes of race, sexuality and gender identity, a growing number of banned books “depict topics young people confront in the real world, including experiences with substance abuse, suicide, depression and mental health concerns, and sexual violence,” PEN America observed.
“The passage of time when you’re in 6th grade or 11th grade is very fast—with much to learn about,” Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program, said. “What students can read in schools provides the foundation for their lives, whether critical thinking, empathy across difference, personal well-being or long-term success.”
Florida and Iowa banned the most books during the 2023-2024 school year, with the former removing more than 4,500 titles and the latter, 3,600. Other states that saw more than 100 book bans include Texas (538), Wisconsin (408), Virginia (121) and Kentucky (100). In Wisconsin, Virginia and Kentucky, five or fewer school districts did all of the banning, PEN America noted.
Stephen King, Sarah J. Maas and Ellen Hopkins also among the most frequently banned authors. Some 74 of King’s books were removed, compared to 22 for Maas and 19 by Hopkins.
Book banning is a component of a bigger challenge facing public schools, warned Sabrina Baêta, manager for PEN America’s Freedom to Read program. “Every day we are seeing reports of author visits and book fairs canceled, libraries shuttered for excessive book reviews and heightened scrutiny and intimidation of teachers and librarians,” Baêta concluded. “Our book ban data is a bellwether of this broader climate.”
