Attempts to remove books from schools and libraries haven’t slowed down over the past year, according to new data from PEN America and the American Library Association, two organizations that track book challenges.
PEN America reported 11,982 book bans during the 2025-2026 school year, which the organization defines as instances in which students’ access to a certain book is restricted or diminished.
The total marks the highest number of individual bans since the organizations started tracking the data in 2021. Reports are collected through news stories, publicly available school district and board documents, records requests, and direct reports to the organization.
The American Library Association, which uses different metrics than PEN America, counted 8,596 books targeted for removal or restricted access and 5,668 books removed from public, school, and academic libraries in response to objections from individuals or groups in 2025.
Book challenges surged nationally about five years ago, as states began passing legislation that banned certain lessons about race, gender, and other “controversial” topics in schools, and heated debates erupted in school boards across the country over what constituted appropriate reading material.
Read on for three takeaways about how this year’s lists compare to past trends.
1. Books about race and gender are still a main target
There’s a large range of challenged and removed books, from classic novels like Jane Eyre to picture books aimed at preschoolers. PEN America counts 7,370 unique titles, while the ALA reports 4,235.
Still, the majority of removed books, 58%, are aimed at young adult audiences, according to PEN America. On both organizations’ lists, the most challenged book this year was Sold by Patricia McCormick, a 2006 young adult novel about a Nepalese girl forced into child sex trafficking.
Both organizations say books about race or gender, or books with main characters of color or LGBTQ+ characters, fill outsized space on these lists. In the ALA’s data, about 40% of the individual titles challenged were about the lives and experiences of LGBTQ+ people or people of color.
And a new trend emerged in PEN America’s data: Manga, a Japanese form of graphic novel, was often identified for removal this past year. Fourteen percent of all the book bans PEN America identified were aimed at graphic novels this year, and two manga authors feature on the organization’s top 10 banned authors list.
2. Most challenges come from school boards, elected officials, or outside groups
Of the nearly 8,600 book challenges in 2025 according to the ALA, only 4% came solely from parents or library patrons.
Forty percent originated with school boards or district administrations; 31% from elected or government officials.
And 1 in 5 came from outside organizations, including groups such as Take Back the Classroom and Moms for Liberty, said Amelia Aldred, the deputy director of state and local advocacy for ALA’s Office of Public Policy and Advocacy.
Some of these organizations direct parents to lists of books they deem inappropriate content—lists that then show up as challenges in school board meetings, Aldred said.
Take Back the Classroom, a project of the Capitol Resource Institute, a nonprofit advocacy group, offers “book reports” that excerpt material reviewers label as sexually explicit, alongside how-to guides for challenging library books and responding when critics “defend porn in schools.”
“When you have organized pressure groups or individual politicians challenging books and pushing this, it’s not an organic movement. It’s not a grassroots movement,” said Aldred.
Take Back the Classroom’s website says that the organization aims to “equip citizens across the country to raise the same issue, at the same time, in their own communities.”
Karen England, the founder and president of Take Back the Classroom, said saying the group isn’t grassroots is “disingenuous.”
“Supplying parents with information for them to choose or not choose to do something with it is totally organic. We’re not making anyone do anything,” she said, adding that she sees some of the books in school libraries today as “smut.”
“We’re letting parents know what’s in these books,” she said.
3. Book challenges remain concentrated in a few areas of the country
The vast majority of attempts to remove books from shelves are happening in Florida and Texas, data from both organizations show.
In PEN America’s report, 95% of the nearly 12,000 book bans originated in those two states. The ALA’s report attributes 4,737 challenges to Texas and Florida combined. (Tennessee comes in third, with 1,035 challenges.) These data mirror those in previous years’ reports.
PEN America cites SB 13, a 2025 Texas law, as one driver of activity in the state. The law prohibits “profane” or “indecent” content from school libraries and gives school boards and community members more control over collection curation.
“Across all states, bans in 72% of districts we tracked can be attributed to state legislation, either because school book review policies cite state law, books were banned by committees like those mandated by SB 13, or because a district’s rationale for a ban specifically cited state legislation,” the report reads.
Even within the states experiencing many bans, it’s a relatively small number of school districts and libraries that face the majority of attempted removals.
The ALA tallied 71 attempts in Florida, for example, and 39 in Texas. PEN America counted reports from 114 individual school districts, though the organization notes that is up from 87 districts in the 2024-25 school year.
Still, it’s possible state legislation has broader ripple effects than what’s evident in these data, Aldred said.
The ALA has also received reports of “silent censorship,” she said, in which district officials or librarians preemptively remove books they fear may be challenged.
