(NEW YORK)— PEN America today released the top 52 banned books in public schools since 2021, when the writers and free expression organization began documenting the unprecedented wave of censorship that now impacts millions of students across 45 states. Bestselling author John Green’s young adult modern classic Looking for Alaska (2005) led the list, banned 147 times.
The list includes bestselling books that won the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and Stonewall and Lambda Literary Awards. Some of the books were adapted by Hollywood and became popular movies. Many are on coveted “best of” lists. Two books by the late Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrisson were on the list, Beloved, banned 77 times, and The Bluest Eye, banned 116 times.
Green, whose novels have sold 50 million copies worldwide, described the number of challenges to Looking for Alaska, which won the Michael L. Printz Award for young adult fiction, as “strange” and “surreal,” based on bad-faith readings that look for something pornographic in a book about grief and loss.
“People always say it is a badge of honor, but I think it’s become less and less of a badge of honor and more and more cause for concern,” Green told PEN America in an interview.
Green called book bans “very destructive to the social order.”
He said: “There’s nothing wrong with disliking a book. The issue I have is when you try to tell me what my kids can read, and when you try to define what other people’s kids can read. I think that’s very destructive to the social order, and I think that intellectual freedom is a core principle of American life, and it’s disappointing to see so many thousands of challenges and book bans over the last few years. And more than disappointing, it’s, for me at least, pretty scary.”
READ the full Q and A with Green
Green’s novels are among TIME magazine’s 100 Best Young Adult and The Fault in Our Stars (2012), a romance about two teenagers facing cancer, is one of the best-selling books of all time. The Hollywood film was a 2014 blockbuster.
List Includes Acclaimed and Modern Classics
The banned book list includes titles beloved in some cases by two generations of young people, including Jodi Picoult’s book centered around a school shooting, Nineteen Minutes, which has been banned 142 times; seven of bestselling author Sarah J. Maas’ titles from her three fantasy book series, along with seven by popular young adult author Ellen Hopkins, whose novels center on teenagers facing addiction, abuse, mental illness and other deep trauma.
Modern classics like The Color Purple by Alice Walker; The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood; The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini and The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky are also listed.
PEN America has documented nearly 23,000 book bans in public schools since 2021—systemic censorship never before seen in the lives of living Americans. Mobilized by groups espousing extremist viewpoints, including Christian nationalism and parental rights rhetoric, the censorship predominantly targets books about race and racism or books featuring individuals of color and LGBTQ+ people and topics, as well as books intended for high school readers that have sexual references or discuss sexual violence.
Kasey Meehan, who directs PEN America’s Freedom to Read program, said: “Books that have opened the eyes of millions of young readers to new perspectives, made them look at others with greater empathy and understanding or guided them through difficult experiences are now lost to them in their schools because conservative activists believe their extremist agenda should take precedence over the freedom to read. Lawmakers and school districts have gone along with this wrongheaded idea. We need to fix our sight on the enormous cost to students when books that have gained wide critical recognition and readership are being removed from schools. This puts nothing less than a chokehold on the futures of students as citizens of a diverse democracy.”
On Thursday, PEN America will publish a policy brief that analyzes how state laws are propelling book bans. State governments have enacted a range of bills and policies since 2021, some with direct prohibitions on instruction, restricting teaching about topics such as race, gender, American history, and LGBTQ+ identities and others with indirect means to chilling speech, such as criminal punishments and other penalties. Several of these laws have contributed to thousands of book bans that chip away libraries’ autonomy, students’ right to read, and public education writ large.
PEN America’s most recent report for the 2024-2025 school year recorded 6,870 instances of book bans affecting nearly 4,000 unique titles. For the third straight year, Florida was the No. 1 state for book bans, with 2,304 instances of bans, followed by Texaswith 1,781 bans and Tennessee with 1,622. All three of those states have laws that inflamed the book banning crisis across their state’s public schools.
About PEN America
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. Learn more at pen.org.
Contact: Suzanne Trimel, [email protected], 201-247-5057