PEN America has released its most recent report documenting public school book bans for the full 2023-2024 school year, finding 10,046 bans nationwide—a more than 200% rise over the previous school year. The report, Banned in the USA: Beyond the Shelves, confirms and details the organization’s preliminary findings, released in September, with the group’s finalized stats indicating that 4,231 unique titles were banned during the 2023-2024 school year, impacting 2,662 authors, 195 illustrators, and 31 translators.
“This crisis is tragic for young people hungry to understand the world they live in and see their identities and experiences reflected in books,” said Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program, in a statement accompanying the report. “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. The defense of the core principles of public education and the freedom to read, learn, and think is as necessary now as ever.”
According to the report, Florida and Iowa led all states in K-12 book bans during the 2023-2024 school year, due to laws in both states that censor books in public schools. Both laws are being challenged in court by a coalition of plaintiffs, led by publishers.
The report is the latest in PEN America’s Banned in the USA series since its inception in 2021. Over the last three years, the organization has counted close to 16,000 instances of book bans in public schools impacting 6,143 titles.
The report also once again found that “individuals and groups espousing extreme conservative viewpoints predominantly targeted titles with themes of race, sexuality, and gender identity.” Titles about “LGBTQ+ people and characters, people and characters of color, and books with sex-related content” were overwhelmingly affected. In addition, books that “depict topics young people confront in the real world, including experiences with substance abuse, suicide, depression and mental health concerns, and sexual violence” are increasingly being targeted.
Nineteen Minutes by bestselling author Jodi Picoult was the most commonly banned book during the last school year, followed by 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. Other frequently banned authors include Ellen Hopkins, Stephen King, and Sarah J. Maas.
“Having the most banned book in the country is not a badge of honor, it’s a call for alarm,” Picoult said in a statement. “My book, and the ten thousand others that have been pulled off school library shelves this year, give kids a tool to deal with an increasingly divided and difficult world. These book banners aren’t helping children. They are harming them.”
