PEN America today released a new report, “The Normalization of Book Banning,” documenting public school book bans for the 2024–25 school year—the fourth year of what the free speech organization calls the “contemporary campaign to ban books.”

Between July 2024 and June 2025, PEN America counted 6,870 instances of book bans across 23 states and 87 public school districts. For the third straight year, Florida had the most, with 2,304, followed by Texas with 1,781, and Tennessee with 1,622. Since 2021, PEN America has documented nearly 23,000 cases of book bans across 45 states and 451 public school districts.

The number of reported books banned dropped significantly from the previous year, when PEN America documented more than 10,000 instances, but the report notes this does not mean the crisis is abating. In fact, the lower totals may be the product of the mass of removals in past years—books removed previously and still unavailable to students are not counted in this year’s data—combined with the current nature of removing large lists of books and not reporting it as these actions become expected and normalized. The numbers also cannot account for books no longer being purchased under pressure and fear of consequences. PEN America collects its data from book bans that are directly reported to the organization, as well as media reports.

“Censorship pressures have expanded and escalated, taking on different forms—laws, directives, guidance that sows confusion, lists of books mislabeled as ‘explicit’ materials, and ‘do not buy’ lists,” Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program, said in a statement. “A disturbing ‘everyday banning’ and normalization of censorship has worsened and spread over the last four years. The result is unprecedented.”

For the 2024–25 school year, PEN recorded three types of book bans:

Banned: Books that have been completely prohibited and removed

Banned pending investigation: Titles removed pending review

Banned by restriction: Books given grade-level or school-level restrictions or requiring parental permissions.

The bans impacted the works of almost 2,600 individuals, including 2,308 authors, 243 illustrators, and 38 translators, according to the report, which said the books that continue to be most frequently targeted typically depict sexual violence or contain themes related to race and racism, gender identity, and sexuality.

“Over the past four years, a misleading campaign to ‘protect children’ alongside advocacy for ‘parental rights’ has been weaponized to diminish students’ First Amendment rights in schools, sow distrust in librarians and educators, and diminish the ability of authors and illustrators to connect with their intended audiences,” the report said. “These attacks on students’ rights and educational institutions are the symptoms of a much larger disease: the dismantling of public education and a backsliding democracy.”

Some new names and titles appeared on the list of most frequently banned books and authors. The top five most banned books were: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess; Sold by Patricia McCormick and Breathless by Jennifer Niven tied at second; Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo; and A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas. It was the first time A Clockwork Orange or Breathless appeared on PEN’s lists.

While authors Ellen Hopkins, Sarah J. Maas, and Jodi Picoult once again were among the five most-banned authors, horror author Stephen King was new to the PEN America list in this contemporary time of book bans. King was the most banned author of the last school year with 87 titles banned a total of 206 times. Manga creator Yūsei Matsui was on the list for the first time, rounding out the Top 5.

The PEN America report identified some key trends:

• Federal efforts to restrict education use rhetoric from state and local efforts to ban books. In 2025, a new vector of book banning pressure has appeared—the federal government. Since returning to office, the Trump Administration has mimicked rhetoric about “parents’ rights,” which, in Florida and other states, has largely been used to advance book bans and censorship of schools, against the wishes of many parents, students, families, and educators.

• Persistent attacks conflate LGBTQIA+ identities as “sexually explicit” and erase LGBTQIA+ representation from schools. Since book challenges and removals exploded in 2021, books depicting same-sex and trans identities have been conflated as inherently “sexual.” In sexualizing LGBTQIA+ people, swaths of literature have been removed under the premise of removing “inappropriate” or “obscene” books.

• Many of these book bans are not due to decisions made in reconsideration policies and processes. Nor are they the direct result of legislation. As noted in PEN America’s first Banned in the USA report, just 4 percent of books banned in 2021–22 followed the recommended processes for reconsideration and challenges of books in school districts. For the 2024–25 school year, vast numbers of the books removed from shelves—pending investigation and permanently banned—came as a result of fear of legislation by school boards, administrators, and educators.

• State-mandated bans are challenging to quantify but we can estimate the impact on students, and that impact is significant. In 2024, Utah and South Carolina introduced mechanisms to create state-mandated “no read” lists. Tennessee also enacted such a mechanism in 2024; however, it has not been used. PEN America cannot verify if every district had copies of the book titles now prohibited in school libraries, but can estimate the scale of restrictions on the freedom to read.

• Where there are everyday book bans, there is also everyday resistance. For the first time in PEN America’s tracking, it catalogued a robust network of advocates fighting back publicly against censorship in defense of the freedom to read. Of the 87 districts impacted by book bans this year, 70 contained evidence of a public response against censorship, whether from individuals, organized groups, or whole communities.