PEN America: banned books trend shifts

School book bans are changing shape. The older stereotype was that districts were mostly targeting novels accused of being sexually explicit. But PEN America’s new May 7 report says the center of gravity has moved — toward nonfiction, biography, history, health, and books about real people and real events. That matters because once censorship shifts from stories to facts, the fight stops being just about library shelves and starts hitting how schools teach the world. ### What changed this year? The big change is the mix of books being removed. PEN America tracked 3,743 unique titles banned from July 1, 2024, through June 30, 2025, across 6,780 total ban instances in 23 states. More than a quarter of those titles — 29% — were nonfiction, which PEN says is more than double the share from the prior school year. (pen.org) ### Why is nonfiction the important part? Because nonfiction is where students go for baseline knowledge. These are books about history, public health, bodies, racism, grief, biography, and current events. Pulling a novel narrows one kind of perspective. Pulling nonfiction can narrow the factual frame students are allowed to learn inside. That is why PEN describes the trend as a move toward stripping away “stories and histories,” not just controversial fiction. (pen.org) ### Are these mostly books with explicit sex? Not really — and this is one of the sharpest gaps between the rhetoric and the data. PEN says only 10% of the banned titles included explicit “on the page” sexual experiences. Far more common were books involving non-sexual violence, death and grief, empowerment and self-esteem, and LGBTQ+ topics or metaphors. So the usual public justification does not explain most of the removals. (pen.org) ### Whose stories are getting hit? A lot of the books center people of color. PEN says 44% of the banned titles featured characters or people of color. That does not mean every challenged book was removed for race-related reasons. But it does show the bans are falling heavily on books that widen the range of who gets seen, remembered, and taught in school spaces. (k12dive.com) ### Is this just a one-year blip? It looks more like an evolution of the same campaign. PEN has been tracking school book bans since 2021, and earlier reports already showed heavy targeting of books with LGBTQ+ themes, sexual content, and characters of color. What changed in the 2024-25 school year is that nonfiction took a much bigger share of the damage. In other words, the censorship push did not just continue — it broadened. (k12dive.com) ### Why does that broadened target matter? Because nonfiction removals can reshape both libraries and classrooms. A memoir can disappear. A history title can disappear. A health explainer can disappear. Basically, the banned-book fight starts to look less like a culture-war dispute over a handful of edgy titles and more like a struggle over which facts, identities, and experiences count as safe for students to encounter. That is a deeper change in the school environment. (pen.org) ### What is PEN really arguing? PEN’s core argument is that the pattern undercuts the idea that bans are narrowly about shielding kids from graphic material. The organization says the growing focus on nonfiction and real-world subjects points instead to a wider effort to remove books tied to race, identity, lived experience, and shared history. You do not have to agree with every framing choice in the report to see the trend line it is pointing at. (pen.org) ### So what’s the bottom line? The new piece of news is not just that book bans remain high. It is that the target list is shifting toward factual books and diverse voices. Once that happens, censorship is no longer only about what students read for pleasure. It starts shaping what students are allowed to know. (pen.org)