Book bans hit record high in 2025-26 school year
PEN America recorded nearly 12,000 book bans affecting 7,370 unique titles across 114 U.S. School districts in the 2025-26 academic year, a record high driven by AI tools and state laws in Texas and Florida.
Book bans in U.S. Public schools reached a record high during the 2025-26 academic year. PEN America recorded 11,982 instances of book banning, the highest total since the organization began tracking literary censorship five years ago. The bans affected 7,370 individual works across 114 school districts.
Texas and Florida lead the surge
The vast majority of book bans occurred in Texas and Florida. Texas alone recorded more than 8,100 book removals in the 2025-26 school year. That figure surpassed the total bans recorded across all U.S. States the previous year. Florida was previously the top book-banning state before being overtaken by Texas.
AI and laws enable mass removals
New state laws and artificial intelligence tools facilitated the sharp increase. Texas’s SB13 targets broad categories of books deemed 'obscene'. School district administrators in Texas and elsewhere now use AI chatbots to generate lists of titles containing specific keywords. These tools scrape book lists via web searches without considering nuance, context, or authorial intent. Public records show AI chatbots suggesting the removal of titles in legal grey areas.
Targeted titles and authors
Banned works are overwhelmingly fiction for young adult readers. Common themes include race, racism, queer experiences, and sex. The most banned individual title was Patricia McCormick’s Sold, removed in 25 school districts. Other frequently challenged books and authors include:
| Title | Author | Districts Banning It |
|---|---|---|
| Sold | Patricia McCormick | 25 |
| Speak | Laurie Halse Anderson | 23 |
| Crank | Ellen Hopkins | 22 |
| The Handmaid's Tale | Margaret Atwood | (commonly targeted) |
Classics and contemporary novels also faced new scrutiny. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry were among the newly banned titles.
Manga and new titles face scrutiny
Scrutiny of manga series contributed to the spike. Districts have flagged entire series for removal, impacting upwards of 20 or 50 unique titles in a single action. Frequently banned manga creators include Atsushi Ohkubo (Soul Eater), Hajime Isayama (Attack on Titan), and Rumiko Takahashi (Inuyasha). More than 4,500 of the banned titles were not previously indexed by PEN, representing the most new titles added in a single year.
The increase reflects a shift from local practice to a nationwide campaign, amplified by prominent government officials. PEN acknowledges its numbers are an undercount due to unreported instances. In Florida and Texas, thousands of cases are only recorded due to public information requests by state Freedom to Read projects. Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program, linked the trend to a broader literary decline. "When reading for pleasure is in decline across all ages, bans on popular and engaging titles are exceptionally tragic," Meehan said.
Philomena Polefrone, a senior manager in the program, highlighted a lack of transparency. "Books paid for by taxpayers are being removed from shelves, and the local community may not even know about it." PEN released its report Banned in the USA during Banned Books Week, detailing a surge that has led to 34,000 recorded bans since 2021.
