The American Library Association kicked off Banned Books Week 2024 with a report that the number of attempts to ban books in public, school, and academic libraries is lower so far this year than in 2023. In fact, the number of book challenges recorded by the ALA is down 40% year to date, from 695 in the first eight months of 2023 to 414 in the same period of 2024. The number of unique titles challenged dropped by about the same percentage, from 1,915 to 1,128.
The freedom-to-read group PEN America, on the other hand, reported a sharp increase in attempts to remove books from school libraries in the 2023-2024 school year, with over 10,000 successful challenges, compared to 3,362 in the 2022-2023 school year. The organization will reveal the final number for 2023-2024 as well as details on the content of challenged books later this year.
It is unclear how the two organizations came to such different conclusions. However, both agree that book challenges are still a major issue. The ALA emphasized that the number of attempts to ban books is still considerably higher than in 2020, just before the recent wave of challenges began. In addition, the freedom to read continues to be threatened by libraries who remove or simply choose not to purchase books before they are challenged, as well as the “soft censorship” of libraries who purchase books but restrict their circulation.
PEN pointed to new state laws in Florida and Iowa, which they state accounted for over 8,000 book bans. Because those laws focus on sexual content, the increase includes romances, books with rape and sexual assault, and books with characters who are part of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as books with racial themes or characters. Many of the new laws have ended up in court (see “Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks Arkansas Law” and “Publishers Sue Florida, California Bans Book Bans”). They predict more statewide bans and, like the ALA, they cited “soft censorship,” including “increased hesitancy in book selection, ideologically-driven restrictions of school books purchases, the removal of classroom collections, and the cancellations of author visits and book fairs.”
Three of the ten most challenged books in 2023, according to the ALA, were graphic novels: Gender Queer, by Maia Kobabe; Flamer, by Mike Curato; and Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human, by Erica Moen and Matthew Nolan (see “Three Graphic Novels Among Top 10 Most Challenged”).
Banned Books Week is September 22-28, 2024.
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