PEN America warns of rise in books 'systematically removed from school libraries'

PEN America warns of rise in books 'systematically removed from school libraries'

Anastasia Tsioulcas

October 01, 2025 / 5:56 am

PEN America released its list of the most-banned books of the 2024-2025 school year on Wednesday – and warned that the number of books challenged or banned in public school districts across the country has risen exponentially in the past two years.

The group dedicated to free expression counted 6,870 bans during the past academic year. While that's down from a total of 10,046 bans imposed during the 2023-24 school year, it's still a sharp rise from the period of 2021-2023, which averaged just under 3,000 incidents of book banning each year, in what it calls a "disturbing normalization of censorship" in public schools.

PEN America defines a school book