Nearly 12,000 School Book Bans Nationwide in 2025-2026—Biggest Number in a Single Year; PEN America, October 5, 2026

PEN America; Nearly 12,000 School Book Bans Nationwide in 2025-2026—Biggest Number in a Single Year

"PEN America today reported nearly 12,000 book bans in public schools nationwide during the 2025-2026 school year—the largest number in a single year. New state censorship laws accounted for much of the increase, coupled with the use of artificial intelligence to remove books en masse including popular manga series and other graphic novels.

In a report released to coincide with Banned Books Week, the latest accounting of book bans increased to 34,000 instances since PEN America began documenting the spreading book censorship crisis in schools in 2021. 

Texas recorded the largest number of book bans during the 2025-2026 school year (over 8,100), surpassing Florida (over 3,200), due to the impact of a censorial Texas law, SB13, which bans broad categories of books in schools. Florida had been No. 1 for three consecutive years.

The writers and free expression organization also reported a record number of unique titles banned in the last school year—more than 7,000—which impacted more than 4,000 authors, illustrators and translators, also a record number. In addition, researchers identified 114 school districts that had banned books over the year, the highest number ever for a single year according to PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans.

Patricia McCormick’s 2006 award-winning young adult novel Sold, which tells the fictional story of a teenager from Nepal who is sold into sexual slavery, was No. 1 among the most frequently banned books during the school year. The most banned author for the second year in a row was Stephen King."

Libraries oppose censorship. So they're getting creative when it comes to offensive kids' books; CNN, March 3, 2021

Scottie Andrew, CNN; Libraries oppose censorship. So they're getting creative when it comes to offensive kids' books

"Books with offensive content remain available to check out, she said, but they better serve readers as a "springboard for conversations and healing." The library's attention remains on widening its selections that center members of historically marginalized groups.

If a classic is still popular, librarian Kaitlin Frick wrote in a blog post for the Association for Library Service to Children, library staff should attach to it a guide for discussing racism for parents and young readers. She also suggests librarians encourage parents to check out anti-racist books or more inclusive titles along with a classic book. 

Spotlighting books that feature diverse characters while sidelining, but still offering, books that reduce diverse characters to stereotypes is an option that sticks to librarians' anti-censorship stance and, hopefully, carves out a place for more books to join the wider canon of notable children's literature, Caldwell Stone said.

"It's always been the role of libraries to foster cultural understanding," she said. And with a larger emphasis on books that don't rely on stereotypes and prejudice to entertain, librarians hope, libraries can be havens for readers from all backgrounds."

Some white ‘Star Trek’ fans are unhappy about remake’s diversity; Washington Post, June 23, 2017

Travis M. Andrews, Washington Post; Some white ‘Star Trek’ fans are unhappy about remake’s diversity

"Indeed, the ‘Star Trek’ series, as Manu Saadia put it in the New Yorker, has always been about inclusion, diversity and breaking down human-made social barriers. Saadia wrote:

Each successive “Star Trek” cast has been like a model United Nations. Nichols’s black communications specialist worked alongside George Takei’s Japanese helmsman and Walter Koenig’s (admittedly campy) Russian navigator. Leonard Nimoy’s Spock was half-human, half-Vulcan, and he bore traces of the actor’s own upbringing in a poor Jewish neighborhood in Boston. The Vulcan hand greeting, for instance, which Nimoy invented, is the Hebrew letter shin, the symbol for the Shekhinah, a feminine aspect of the divine. The original series aired only a few years after the Cuban missile crisis, at the height of the Vietnam War and the space race, and its vision of a reconciled humanity was bold. Nichols, who considered leaving the show after the first season, has said that she was persuaded to stay on by Martin Luther King, Jr., who told her that he watched “Star Trek” with his wife and daughters.

This isn’t the first time an entry in the “Star Trek” series has come under fire for including ever more diverse characters. Just last year, the film “Star Trek Beyond” portrayed Sulu as a gay man. It was the first time the series featured an openly gay character, and some fans were furious."