PEN America – The Normalization of Book Banning: “In 2025, book censorship in the United States is rampant and common. Never before in the life of any living American have so many books been systematically removed from school libraries across the country. Never before have so many states passed laws or regulations to facilitate the banning of books, including bans on specific titles statewide. Never before have so many politicians sought to bully school leaders into censoring according to their ideological preferences, even threatening public funding to exact compliance. Never before has access to so many stories been stolen from so many children. The book bans that have accumulated in the past four years are unprecedented and undeniable. This report looks back at the 2024-2025 school year – the fourth school year in the contemporary campaign to ban books – and illustrates the continued attacks on books, stories, identities, and histories. This report offers a window into the complex and extensive climate of censorship between July 1, 2024 through June 30, 2025. Our reporting on book bans remains a bellwether of a larger campaign to restrict and control education and public narratives, wreaking havoc on our public schools and democracy…”

What books are banned in 2025? Thousands of titles have been removed from public schools across the country. PEN America has documented nearly 23,000 book bans in public schools nationwide since 2021, a number never before seen in the life of any living American. This censorship is being mobilized by groups espousing conservative viewpoints — and has spread to nearly every state— and predominantly targets books about race and racism or books featuring individuals of color and LGBTQ+ people and topics, as well those for older readers that have sexual references or discuss sexual violence.  In the 2024-2025 school year, PEN America recorded 6,870 instances of book bans affecting nearly 4,000 unique titles. For the third straight year, Florida was the No. 1 state for book bans, with 2,304 instances of bans, followed by Texas with 1,781 bans and Tennessee with 1,622. The 15 most banned books in the 2024-2025 school year, according to the PEN America Index of School Book Bans, include the Anthony Burgess classic A Clockwork Orange, two books in the Sarah J. Maas Court of Thorns and Roses series, and bestselling novelist Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes, about the unfolding of a school shooting.For more on what kinds of bans are happening and where, read Banned in the U.S.A.: The Normalization of Book Banning…”