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Want to know a disturbing fact? Book Bans have tripled since 2022, thanks to state legislatures, city and county councils, and school boards implementing censorship laws advanced by right-wing special interests and central to Project 2025. and a new study from PEN AMERICA shows that the Lone Star state is in the Top Five in the US for the most book bans.
No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you, in a newly released study from a nonprofit freedom for literacy and anti-censorship advocacy group, PEN AMERICA titled Banned in the USA: Beyond the Shelves, Texas has ranked 3rd place for Book Bans with 538 total was reported in the last school year. Listed below are the Top Five States that were included in the study.
Book Bans Ranked (States):
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- Florida– 4,561
- School Districts- 33
- Iowa- 3,671
- School Districts- 117
- Texas- 538
- School Districts- 12
- Wisconsin- 408
- School Districts- 4
- Virginia– 121
- School Districts- 5
According to CHRON’s Faith Bugenhagen, the four districts within the state with the most book bans were North East ISD in San Antonio, Fort Worth ISD, Conroe ISD, and Plano ISD. In order, the districts recorded 171, 123, 106, and 64 book bans, respectively. In this new report for 2023-2024, there have been 10,046 book bans, a 200 percent rise over the previous school year. Over 4,000 individual titles were banned in these cases, and 4,295 bans involved books completely prohibited from district shelves.
What and How Many Books Were Commonly Banned Books?
- 1,091 books were commonly banned
- 57% included Sex-related themes or depictions
- 44% included characters or people of color
- 39% included LGBTQIA+ characters or people
Author Jodi Picoult spoke to PEN AMERICA about the book bans, her book titled Nineteen Minutes was one of the Top Five Banned Books:
Having the most banned book in the country is not a badge of honor – it’s a call for alarm, 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.”
Jodi Picoult, Author of Nineteen Minutes
The Types Of School Book Bans:
- BANNED- Books Completely Prohibited
- BANNED (Pending Investigation)- Books waiting for review to determine if they will be fully restricted.
- Banned By Restriction- Titles that have been limited to certain grade levels or need parental permission to access.
Types of Soft Censorship:
- Quiet Censorship- Often referred to “Soft Censorship” or “Self Censorship”, Quiet Censorship occurs when materials are purposefully removed, limited, or never purchased at all despite it being a title that would serve a community.
- Targeted Weeding- While weeding is a common library practice to remove old, outdated, or damaged books, targeted weeding is when certain titles are weeded from collections based on content and/or on an ideological basis.
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Experts have weighed in on book bans, policy changes, and new laws that have risen not only in Texas, but all over the country, saying “censorial trends have continued to ripple beyond the shelves, designed to suppress education about certain viewpoints, identities, and histories.” While these book bans are disappointing, two congressmen introduced a resolution to condemn book bans on September 25, 2024. Representatives Jamie Raskin (MD-08) and Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) reintroduced The Bicameral Resolution, a new resolution that would condemn the escalating censorship crisis that has removed and targeted thousands of books from the shelves of schools, libraries, and universities across the country. It would also reinforce the congressional recognition of students’ First Amendment rights and affirm that the freedom to read is essential to a strong democracy.
Source: CHRON, PEN AMERICA, Congressman Jamie Raskin Press Release
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