PEN America counted 3,743 unique titles pulled from school libraries in the latest academic year — and nonfiction is now a front-line target. According to PEN's Facts & Fiction report, nonfiction's share of banned titles doubled — from 14% to 29%, which works out to more than 1,100 books. Reference and informational titles — the kind that live on classroom shelves rather than school libraries — more than doubled their share, climbing from 5% to 13%.
Banned titles include Home Life in Ancient Egypt, A Tour of Your Digestive System, Aztec, Inca & Maya, and Challenges for LGBTQ Teens. Four out of five banned titles were aimed at children and young adults.
Fiction bans still skew heavily toward books featuring characters of color (44% of all bans, the highest PEN has ever recorded) and LGBTQ+ characters (39%, up from 25%). Books featuring trans or genderqueer characters tripled — from 7% to 19% — a striking overrepresentation given the Williams Institute's estimate that transgender people make up about 1% of those 13 and older. Sexual content of any kind appears in just one in ten of the banned books.
Judy Blume, who has watched this wave build for decades, said: "censorship grows out of fear, and because fear is contagious, some parents are easily swayed. Book banning satisfies their need to feel in control of their children's lives."
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