Nearly 12,000 books were banned in public schools during the 2025-2026 school year, according to PEN America, the highest number since the organization began tracking bans in 2021. That was sadly not the only book banning record broken, however.
The Numbers
PEN America’s “A Spotlight on School Book Bans,” released yesterday, reported that in public schools during the last school year:
- 11,982 books were banned;
- Comprising 7,370 unique titles;
- Including over 4,500 titles not previously recorded in PEN America’s Index, the most new titles added to the index in a single year;
- Representing the work of more than 4,000 authors, illustrators, and translators;
- Across 114 school districts, the highest number ever in a single school year.
As in previous years, most banned titles (58%) were young adult books. Across all ages, the vast majority were fiction titles (more than 80%). Texas led all states in bans, with more than 8,000, followed by Florida with more than 3,000. No other state had more than 200.
These numbers, gathered from PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans, differ from those of the American Library Association, which looks at libraries more generally, not just schools, and uses the calendar year rather than the academic year. Both organizations’ data and analysis offer complementary looks at a common problem, however.
The Reasons
What accounts for the continued rise in banned books? The PEN America report identifies two key ongoing pressures: state legislation and the influence of organized groups. Book-ban campaigns are then “picked up and amplified by elected or appointed government leaders, who are having an outsized impact on access to literature in schools.”
One new factor, however, is the rise of AI, with chatbots that “repeatedly recommend removing books, not because those books are obscene under the prevailing legal standard, but instead because other districts have banned them,” says the report, which adds that this “will worsen the snowball effect of book bans.”
Another trend that PEN America highlights this year is “the pervasive banning of graphic novels, specifically manga titles,” commonly by the tactic of “‘Context stripping,’ or examining panels or images without any regard to the book as a whole.” Often an entire series is removed at once, which could sometimes mean 20 to 50 unique titles.
It should also come as no surprise to readers here that PEN America found, “Efforts to purge stories and books from schools have overwhelmingly targeted books about race and racism, LGBTQ+ people or characters, people or characters of color, and sex.”
The Impact
The report asserts, “Book bans impede the freedom to read, cutting students’ access to a diversity of views, voices, perspectives, and literature they deserve to encounter.” That’s absolutely true, but to my mind the damage goes far beyond that. Banning a book about a person of a certain identity, family structure, or experience tells students who share those characteristics that they don’t belong or that they must hide or lie about who they are. Book bans aren’t just about the freedom to read, but about the freedom to be.
Want to do something to stop book bans in your community or beyond? Here are some ways to start.