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PEN America says there was an “unprecedented” surge in book bans during the latter half of 2023, according to a new report. 

The free expression group says that from July-December of last year, it recorded 4,349 instances of book bans across 23 states and 52 public school districts. The report says more books were banned in those six months than in the 12 months of the 2022-2023 school year.  

PEN America says it draws its information on bans from “publicly available data on district or school websites, news sources, public records requests and school board minutes.”

 found that in 2021-2022, “Just 11 people were responsible for filing 60 percent” of book challenges. 

At a press conference today, free expression advocates from around the country that

joined PEN America to discuss bans talked about the seemingly-outsized power of a small, but vocal, group. 

High school senior Quinlen Schachle, the president of the Alaska Association of Student Governments, said when he attends school board meetings, “It’s, like, [the same] one adult that comes up every day and challenges a new book. It is not a concerned a group of parents coming in droves to these meetings.”

Laney Hawes, Co-Director of the Texas Freedom to Read Project said books are often banned because of “a handful of lists that are being circulated to different school districts” and not because of “a parent whose child finds the book and they have a problem with it.”

 a book ban as “any action taken against a book based on its content ... that leads to a previously accessible book being either completely removed from availability to students, or where access to a book is restricted or diminished.”

The conservative American Enterprise Institute 

 exception to PEN America’s April 2022 banned books 

 for the Education Freedom Institute, AEI said it found that “almost three-quarters of the books that PEN listed as banned were still available in school libraries in the same districts from which PEN claimed they had been banned.”

You can read PEN America’s full report 

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Elizabeth Blair

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According to PEN America, 4,349 books were banned from schools between July and December 2023, more than the entire previous school year. More than 3,000 of those bans were in Florida.

Report: Last year ended with a surge in book bans

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