Experts see hope in new book ban data, but caution much work is left to be done

Opponents of book bans across the nation see signs of hope in a pair of reports released this week, but they say the data also demonstrated the vast scope of the issue.

The American Library Association (ALA) found a drop in challenges to books in the first eight months of this year compared to the same time frame last year. PEN America, on the other hand, found book bans have doubled in the 2023-24 school year compared to the previous academic year.

Experts highlight the different methodologies used in the two reports but say both findings show the fight against book bans still needs to be top of mind for those concerned about students’ access to titles.

“As someone who’s studied book banning now for about 25 years, I think what both reports reflect is that we’re in a moment that’s different from any moment I’ve been historically a part of,” said Kathy M. Newman, an associate professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University. 

“I think we’re in another watershed moment for book banning, where after [former President] Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, I think some of the passion and fervor of the movement that he generated turned towards what we’ve very commonly called the culture wars,” Newman said. “So a lot of that energy, a lot of that activism, turned towards fears around gender identity, sexual identity and critical race theory and so those sort of — almost sort of social identities were highlighted as concerns for conservative political activists.”

The ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom reported 1,128 different books were contested through 414 challenges in the first eight months of 2024. At the same time last year, the ALA found 695 challenges involving 1,915 different books.

PEN America says in the 2023-24 school year, it found more than 10,000 instances of book bans, double from the year before.

The ALA counts challenges to books from the media and librarians, while PEN America uses local reports, school websites and board meeting minutes and works with other partnering organizations. 

Both groups caution their reports could be an undercount, with the ALA emphasizing it doesn’t include libraries that choose not to even put a particular book on shelves in order to avoid a potential fight.

“Even though our numbers are slightly down from last year’s numbers, they’re still way beyond what numbers we saw prior to 2020,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. 

“We’ve long cautioned that we know that it’s not complete. We know we can’t collect — we don’t learn about every instance where an elected official or community group tries to remove a book from the library. But we feel that our numbers … and our data collection offer a fair snapshot of what’s going on with book censorship in libraries across the country,” Caldwell-Stone added. “We do have very defined terms for what we consider a challenge, which is a demand to censor a book, which doesn’t always end with the censorship.” 

Another difference is in the terminology used between the groups. The ALA only considers books that are permanently taken off the shelves as bans, whereas PEN America considers any challenge that leads to a book even temporarily removed as a ban.  

PEN America points to concerns of how long books are taken off the shelves when they are under review as part of the reasoning for referring to even temporary removals as a ban.  

“Our guiding principle here is free expression, and … even when a book is restricted for a short period of time, that’s a restriction to one’s freedom to read, so we count that as a ban,” said Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program.

“The reason we count that as a book ban is because we have seen those review processes take weeks, months, years, where access to that book is prohibited,” Meehan added. 

Much of the spike PEN America found in its report is from Florida and Iowa, which saw about 8,000 book bans due to state laws.

And the challenges to books have not gone unnoticed. Numerous lawsuits have been filed against book-banning entities, and many local groups have found creative ways around the restrictions, such as banned book clubs. 

Last week in Florida, a school district reached a settlement in a federal lawsuit to restore three dozen book titles to its libraries.  

“We’ve been doing this for … over 20 years, and we’ve noticed that, especially recent years, that a lot of times books — a lot of books — are challenged, but at least half of them returned back to shelves, and a lot of times it doesn’t get any attention when the books go back,” said Christine Emeran, director of the Youth Free Expression Program at National Coalition Against Censorship. 

Newman, from Carnegie Mellon, said she’s “actually cheered” by the ALA study.

“Book banning is incredibly unpopular. So I would say that just as those who seek to control what others read have been ignited in the last four years, book defenders have also been activated in the last four years, and they’re using some of the same opportunities and techniques — social media reporting, school board elections, school board meetings — to stand up for the rights of professionals to make the choices about what books are on the library shelves or what books are in K-12 curricula,” she said.