‘It’, ‘Carrie’ author Stephen King most banned in US schools, report finds
PEN America’s report revealed a ‘story of two countries’, with most bans on LGBTQ and race content coming from Florida, Texas, and Tennessee
A new report on book bans in US schools finds It author Stephen King is the writer most likely to be censored, with the country divided between states actively restricting works and those attempting to limit or eliminate bans.
PEN America’s “Banned in the USA”, released on Wednesday, tracks more than 6,800 instances of books being temporarily or permanently pulled for the 2024-2025 school year.
The new number is down from more than 10,000 in 2023-24, but still far above the levels of a few years ago, when PEN didn’t even see the need to compile a report.
Some 80 per cent of those bans originated in just three states that have enacted or attempted to enact laws calling for the removal of books deemed objectionable – Florida, Texas and Tennessee.
Meanwhile, PEN found little or no instances of removals in several other states, with Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey among those with laws that limit the authority of school and public libraries to pull books.
“It is increasingly a story of two countries,” said Kasey Meehan, director of PEN’s Freedom to Read programme and an author of Wednesday’s report.