PEN America’s Inflated Book-Ban List

I n 2023, I criticized PEN America’s annual report that claimed to document “3,362 book bans affecting 1,557 unique titles” across the country’s public schools during the 2022–23 academic year. At the time, I noted that the report suffered from a poor methodology that skewed the results to provide the left with ammunition against Republican legislatures. PEN America’s new report for the 2024–25 school year, titled “The Normalization of Book Banning,” records 6,870 instances of book bans affecting nearly 4,000 unique titles across the country — but yet again, such numbers are inflated. The main issue with the organization’s finding, in both the 2023 and 2025 editions of the report, is that the following definitions are employed:

PEN America defines a school book ban as any action taken against a book based on its content and as a result of parent or community challenges, administrative decisions, or in response to direct or threatened action by governmental officials, that leads to a book being either completely removed from availability to students, or where access to a book is restricted or diminished. . . .

School book bans take varied forms, and can include prohibitions on books in libraries or classrooms, as well as a range of other restrictions, some of which may be temporary. For example, if a book that was previously available to all now requires parental permission, or is restricted to a higher grade level than educators initially determined, that is a ban. [Emphasis added.]

I must repeat what I said in 2023: Restricting access does not amount to a “ban.” In the United States, you must be a certain age to drive a car, drink alcohol, or gamble — yet none of us would argue that those activities are “banned” because of the minimum age thresholds. Although PEN America attempts to blame “national and local groups touting extreme conservative views” for the imposition of barriers to a particular book in school, there are entirely reasonable and wholly apolitical reasons why a school might establish an age or grade restriction. Consider a hypothetical scenario where a school originally allowed all students to check out the Harry Potter series but later made it available only to students in third grade and above because, particularly in the later books in the series, the descriptions of death and physical confrontation proved distressing for younger children. Under PEN America’s methodology, the Harry Potter series is now “banned,” but according to any normal person, the school has taken sensible measures to ensure that students are engaging with material that’s appropriate in terms of thematic content and difficulty.

But here are some of my new criticisms of PEN America’s methodology. It seems that PEN America believes that every single book should be available to every single student in every single public school library — and that is stupid. School libraries have limited funds and shelf space, so not every book can be stocked. Therefore, a school and its affiliated community have to make value judgments about which books are worthy of being purchased and offered to kids. Ideally, the selection process will prioritize books with literary value and historical importance, as well as the works in the curriculum. Other books that are just plain fun for kids will probably be picked to encourage reading for pleasure. Ultimately, some books just won’t make the cut — perhaps because the reading level is too advanced, the themes are too mature, the content lacks any intellectual value, or they don’t appeal to kids. Still, contra PEN America’s arguments, the books that fail the curation process have not been “banned.” Instead, those books are simply unavailable at a particular location. Moreover, those books will still be obtainable through other means; a parent can buy them online, or a family can take a trip to the local library. (Isn’t it funny how most “banned” books can be delivered by Amazon within 24 hours?) If a parent buys a “banned” book and the kid reads it at home, neither the school nor police will punish the family.

We can have reasonable debates about which books offer the most value to children, and we can disagree over which topics are appropriate for different age groups. Yet a book that doesn’t earn a spot on a school library’s shelf isn’t “banned,” and pretending otherwise is just a strategy to condemn conservatives as censorious puritans who hate liberty. PEN America claims that “book bans are the result of coordinated campaigns by individuals and groups, some of whom harbor homophobic, white supremacist, and Christian nationalist views.” But the organization’s reports are the result of coordinated campaign by progressives who want to indoctrinate children by flooding them with ideological materials without parental knowledge. Such aims are dubiously justified by damning Republicans through flawed “research” on “banned” books.