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Nearly 12,000 bans took place in American public schools over the past year, according to a new study from PEN America.
This is the highest total since the free expression organization began tracking removals five years ago.
The report arrives during the international Banned Books Week, which runs from Oct. 4 to Oct. 10. This year’s theme is “Let Books Be. Protect the Freedom to Read”, during which events at U.S.-based schools and libraries and other locations call attention to censorship efforts.
While Canada marks its dedicated intellectual freedom campaign in February, some Canadian libraries and bookstores engage in global outreach and displays during this October window.
For the second straight year, American author Stephen King was the author most likely to have his work withdrawn. King’s books were pulled 312 times, with The Shining and The Green Mile among those impacted.
Also among the banned novels in American schools is Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the classic dystopian novel about a totalitarian society in what used to be part of the United States.
The most banned individual title was Patrick McCormick’s novel about a girl sold into sexual slavery in India, Sold, for which PEN found 25 removals.
Other books commonly targeted include Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, her prize-winning novel about a teenager who falls silent after being raped; Ellen Hopkins’ novel about drug addiction, Crank.
(Riverhead Books)
Several titles appear in PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans for the first time during the 2025-2026 school year, including classic novels, gamebook adaptations, popular fiction and coming-of-age young adult stories, manga, and an anthology on feminism.
Among these titles is Romeo and/or Juliet: A Chooseable Path Adventure, a 2016 graphic novel by Ottawa-born webcomic and comic book writer Ryan North.
Many of the bans took place in Florida and Texas, where restrictive laws have been passed and both politicians and conservative activists have pushed for removals. PEN has also found that school district administrators rely increasingly on AI to determine which books should be pulled.
Themes of race, racism, sexuality and gender identity remain the most common reasons books are challenged.
“School libraries make knowledge and ideas available, ensure books remain available for all regardless of personal or political ideologies, and open gateways to stories that inform, challenge, and reflect the realities of the world back to readers,” the PEN report, titled Banned in the USA, reads in part.
“Book bans impede the freedom to read, cutting students’ access to a diversity of views, voices, perspectives, and literature they deserve to encounter.”
In all, PEN found 11,982 cases of bans, affecting 7,370 individual works. Over 4,500 were on the list for the first time, ranging from the 19th century classic Jane Eyre to Sui Ishida’s Tokyo Ghoul manga series.
PEN America and the American Library Association have both reported historic surges in bans since the early 2020s, although their methodologies differ. PEN counts books removed even for a short time as a ban, while the ALA only includes books that have been permanently pulled.
According to the library association’s most recent report, published in April, some 5,600 instances of bans took place during the previous year.
– with files from CBC Books