Skip to content Skip to search

Republish This Story

* Please read before republishing *

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Creative Commons license as long as you follow our republishing guidelines, which require that you credit The 19th and retain our pixel. See our full guidelines for more information.

To republish, simply copy the HTML at right, which includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to The 19th. Have questions? Please email [email protected].

— The Editors

Loading...

Modal Gallery

/
Donate to our newsroom

Menu

Topics

  • Abortion
  • Politics
  • Education
  • LGBTQ+
  • Caregiving
  • Environment & Climate
  • Business & Economy
View all topics

The 19th News(letter)

News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday.

You have been subscribed!

Please complete the following CAPTCHA to be confirmed. If you have any difficulty, contact [email protected] for help.

Submitting...

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please email [email protected] to subscribe.

This email address might not be capable of receiving emails (according to Bouncer). You should try again with a different email address. If you have any questions, contact us at [email protected].

  • Latest Stories
  • Our Mission
  • Our Team
  • Ways to Give
  • Search
  • Contact
Donate
Home

We’re an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy. Read our story.

Topics

  • Abortion
  • Politics
  • Education
  • LGBTQ+
  • Caregiving
  • Environment & Climate
  • Business & Economy
View all topics

The 19th News(letter)

News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday.

You have been subscribed!

Please complete the following CAPTCHA to be confirmed. If you have any difficulty, contact [email protected] for help.

Submitting...

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please email [email protected] to subscribe.

This email address might not be capable of receiving emails (according to Bouncer). You should try again with a different email address. If you have any questions, contact us at [email protected].

  • Latest Stories
  • Our Mission
  • Our Team
  • Ways to Give
  • Search
  • Contact

We’re an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy. Read our story.

The 19th News(letter)

News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday.

You have been subscribed!

Please complete the following CAPTCHA to be confirmed. If you have any difficulty, contact [email protected] for help.

Submitting...

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please email [email protected] to subscribe.

This email address might not be capable of receiving emails (according to Bouncer). You should try again with a different email address. If you have any questions, contact us at [email protected].

Become a member

The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one.

Education

These two states are responsible for most of the nation’s school book bans

It’s Banned Books Week, and books by James Baldwin, Terry McMillan, Amy Tan and Agatha Christie made PEN America’s index of school book bans for the first time.

People read banned books outdoors while standing near a book cart.
People read banned books as part of an October 2023 banned books mobile tour in Charlottesville, Virginia. Banned books have nearly tripled from the 2023-24 school year. (Leigh Vogel/Getty Images)

Nadra Nittle

Education reporter

Published

2024-09-24 13:59
1:59
September 24, 2024
pm

Republish this story

Share

  • Bluesky
  • Facebook
  • Email

Republish this story

Your trusted source for contextualizing education news. Sign up for our daily newsletter.

The number of books banned in public schools over the past year skyrocketed to more than 10,000, with two states — Iowa and Florida — responsible for most of them, according to preliminary findings released by PEN America on Monday.

The report comes during Banned Books Week, which first began in 1982 to raise awareness about the importance of free and openly accessible information. 

The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one.

The rise in banned books during the 2023-’24 school year — nearly tripling from 3,362 bans PEN recorded the previous year — can be attributed partly to the singling out of books about romance and women’s sexual experiences and those about rape or sexual abuse, according to PEN America, a nonprofit advocating for the protection of free expression. Books with LGBTQ+ or racial themes or characters from marginalized groups also continue to be targeted. 

PEN America’s report does not reflect the banning of unique titles, so if a dozen school districts all banned the same book, it would count as 12 bans, a PEN representative explained.  

A number of books, many of which are works by women of color, showed up on PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans for the first time over the past year. They include Julia Alvarez’s 1991 novel, “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents,” about four immigrant sisters from the Dominican Republic — a popular pick for readers during Latinx Heritage Month. Other recent entries to the index include Amy Tan’s novel about the Chinese-American daughter of an immigrant mother, “The Kitchen God’s Wife” (1991); Terry McMillan’s romance novel “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” (1996); and Ellen Oh’s novel inspired by her mother’s experiences during the Korean War, “Finding Junie Kim” (2021). 

Explore more coverage from The 19th
In-depth reporting on topics you care about
Abortion Politics Education LGBTQ+ Caregiving
View all topics

Agatha Christie’s “Death on the Nile” (1937), Betty Smith’s “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” (1943), Olive Ann Burns’ “Cold Sassy Tree”(1984), Barbara Kingsolver’s “Prodigal Summer” (2000) and Julie Murphy’s “Puddin’” (2018) also debuted on the index.

The 1953 novel “Go Tell It On the Mountain” by James Baldwin, a champion of civil and gay rights, appeared on the index for the first time, as did books related to slavery such as Alex Haley’s “Roots: The Saga of An American Family” (1976) and W.E.B. DuBois’ “Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880” (1935). Philip K. Dick’s 1968 dystopian novel “Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep)” debuted on the index, too.

More than a dozen new state and local policies contributed to the escalation of book bans over the past year. They include Iowa’s SF 496, which took effect last year and has been interpreted to mean that books with sexual or gender themes should be barred. According to PEN America, the law prompted thousands of book bans during the 2023-’24 school year, compared with just 14 bans in the state during the previous school year. 

Florida’s HB 1069, which also took effect last year, mandates that books challenged for “sexual conduct” must be removed as they undergo review. PEN America said the statutory process the law created for book banning and “the state guidance building on it” has led to a spike in statewide book bans. In Florida and Iowa combined, roughly 8,000 book bans were recorded. 

In Wisconsin, the Elkhorn Area School District banned more than 300 books for months on end, PEN America found. The books were removed after a single parent challenged them, but after the district reviewed the titles, they were eventually returned to the shelves, albeit with restrictions such as parental permission to check out certain titles. The organization expects newly enacted laws such as Utah’s HB 29, South Carolina’s Regulation 43-170 and Tennessee’s HB 843 to cause more book bans this school year. 

The Utah law requires all schools in the state to ban a book once three school districts have found it objectionable. South Carolina’s regulation bans books with sexual subject matter and gives the state Board of Education the ability to censor works statewide. The Tennessee law requires schools to remove books with gratuitous violence or sexual content.

  • Read Next:
  • Read Next: Book bans in schools jumped 33 percent last year

To mark Banned Books Week, the American Library Association (ALA) has also released preliminary data related to censorship, focusing on book bans in public, school and academic libraries between January 1 and August 31. ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom said it identified 414 attempts to censor works and that there were documented challenges to 1,128  unique book titles. 

The number of attempts to censor books actually fell this year compared with last year’s 695 cases, the ALA found. The organization attributes this to widespread efforts to stop censorship. Librarians, students and concerned community members have organized against book banning in recent years, and book banning disputes have gone to court. This includes a federal court’s preliminary injunction on Arkansas’ Act 372, which would open librarians and bookstore owners in the state to criminal prosecution if they failed to remove “unsuitable” works from their shelves. 

Censorship is an issue that has drawn attention from the 2024 presidential candidates. Former President Donald Trump’s campaign platform accuses President Joe Biden’s administration of “using the public school system to push their perverse sexual, racial and political material on our youth.” In July, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, criticized book bans while speaking to the American Federation of Teachers union in Texas.  

“While you teach students about our nation’s past, these extremists attack the freedom to learn and acknowledge our nation’s true and full history,” she said. “We want to ban assault weapons, and they want to ban books. Can you imagine?”

The theme of this year’s Banned Books Week theme is “Freed Between the Lines” to draw attention to how liberating reading can be. The week ends Saturday with Let Freedom Read Day to urge communities to fight censorship. Film director Ava DuVernay is the 2024 honorary chair of the day, while activist Julia Garnett, who fought book bans in Tennessee, is the youth honorary chair.

The 19th has a relationship with Bookshop.org. If you make a purchase through the Bookshop links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Republish this story

Share

  • Bluesky
  • Facebook
  • Email

Recommended for you

Book bans in schools jumped 33 percent last year
Books about sexual assault aren’t pornographic. Schools are banning them as ‘obscene’ anyway.
Even dictionaries aren’t safe from censorship in this Florida school district
What is ‘soft’ censorship? When school districts don’t ban books, they still limit student access

The 19th News(letter)

News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday.

You have been subscribed!

Please complete the following CAPTCHA to be confirmed. If you have any difficulty, contact [email protected] for help.

Submitting...

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please email [email protected] to subscribe.

This email address might not be capable of receiving emails (according to Bouncer). You should try again with a different email address. If you have any questions, contact us at [email protected].

Become a member

Explore more coverage from The 19th
Abortion Politics Education LGBTQ+ Caregiving
View all topics

Our newsroom's Spring Member Drive is here!

Learn more about membership.

  • Transparency
    • About
    • Team
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Community Guidelines
  • Newsroom
    • Latest Stories
    • 19th News Network
    • Podcast
    • Events
    • Careers
    • Fellowships
  • Newsletters
    • Daily
    • Weekly
    • The Amendment
    • Event Invites
  • Support
    • Ways to Give
    • Sponsorship
    • Republishing
    • Volunteer

The 19th is a reader-supported nonprofit news organization. Our stories are free to republish with these guidelines.