It is Banned Books Week.
That’s a phrase that shouldn’t even be in existence, if you were wondering. But it does exist, and so we have to be vigilant and have times like this where we focus on raising awareness and helping get the word out.
PEN America has documented nearly 23,000 book bans in public schools nationwide since 2021, a number never before seen in the life of any living American.
https://pen.org/banned-books-list-2025/
The three graphics above, created by PEN America show that we continue to fight a battle against ignorance and erasure. Those are big words, heavily nuanced, and they are the right ones. There are more, to be sure, that we could use as well. And there’s a likelihood that the numbers are going to get worse, not better, with current politics moving in the direction they are. And that is incredibly frightening.
What’s wrong with banning books?
It’s fine to say, “I don’t want to read that.” And it’s fine to say, “I don’t want my child to read that.” It isn’t open minded, but we have that right. My mom said she didn’t want me to read Gone with the Wind when I wanted to at 12 because it was a little too heavy for me at that age. Fair enough. I read it later. We don’t read horror novels because they’re not our thing. And that’s fine too.
The problem is when people say, “I don’t want to read that, I don’t want my child to read that, and so nobody should be able to read it.” That, my friends, is censorship and ignorance at a deafening level. A level being used in the world in so many places which were formally places of freedom and free speech. Banning books because you don’t like them, because you have a belief system that doesn’t like them, means you want everyone to think and believe like you do. In fact, you’re demanding it. And that is a dangerous way to exist.
Book bans are a lethal and definable step in the loss of rights and the rise of dictatorships. We’ve seen it before, on a grand and terrible scale. How soon we forget…
In the 2024-2025 school year, PEN America recorded 6,870 instances of book bans affecting nearly 4,000 unique titles.
This week, we’re on social media talking about banned books. We’re sharing books we’ve worked on. We’re sharing other people’s posts and books. We’re asking readers and followers to share the posts everywhere they can in order to help get books with diverse characters into reader’s awareness.
We hope that you’ll join in this week. Whatever platforms you use, search out those banned books and see what they’re about. Share that information. Have a look at the Banned Books List and grab a couple. Read what they don’t want you to read. Find out what it is they’re so afraid of.
Never let them take your stories away. Words matter.
