Banned Books Week Issues A Call To Action For 2024

It’s Banned Books Week again, and those on the front lines have one request: Fight.

Legal action has expanded to defend public libraries in addition to classrooms, authors have joined librarians in organizing to preserve student access, and intellectual freedom advocates are sounding alarms about Project 2025.

School book bans ballooned to more than 10,000 incidents across the country in 2023-24, according to a new report from PEN America. Florida and Iowa tallied the most incidents, the group said.

“Even as polls show most Americans reject book bans, the number of book bans have made a stunning leap from one school year to the next,” said Kasey Meehan, director of Freedom To Read at PEN America. “The rising generation of students are being robbed of books that can nurture and guide them in their formative years simply because a misguided movement has caught the ear of politicians eager to gin up culture wars. Enough is enough.”

The American Library Association launched Banned Books Week back in 1982. The most recent wave of bans mushroomed in part due to social media, notes author and BookRiot columnist Kelly Jensen. She’s been chronicling censorship incidents across the country each week since 2021, and school districts have banned her own books in response to her coverage.

“What is different today, though, is the emergence of social media and engagement algorithms, which have been an incredible tool for book banners,” Jensen told Publishers Weekly. “Imagine that you know nothing about what’s going on, but you’ve heard the words ‘book ban’ buzzing around. So you go online to look up what’s going on, and you’re presented a post about so-called inappropriate books in your local public schools or libraries.

“That link takes you to a Moms for Liberty group or some other local far-right political organization—and then the algorithms kick in and begin serving you up a steady stream of similar content in your feed.”

Supporters of intellectual freedom are increasingly taking their fight to court. Advocates are eagerly awaiting a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals’ Fifth Circuit over the removal of books from the public library in Llano County, Texas, just west of Austin.

Back in 2021, a county judge ordered library workers to remove titles like Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen, Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste and Larry the Farting Leprechaun. Then in 2022, officials dissolved the library board and installed new members, including two people who’d lodged the initial complaints. Seven patrons sued, arguing the moves violated their First Amendment rights. The county has kept appealing decisions that have supported the plaintiffs, at one point even contemplating closing the library outright rather than restore the books.

This will be the first time an appeals court will decide what First Amendment standards govern the removal of books from public library shelves, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which recently filed an amicus brief in the case.

“If courts allow government officials to pull books out of public libraries in order to impose a government-approved set of views, they’re opening a Pandora’s box of censorship,” said Vera Eidelman, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “We’re urging the Fifth Circuit to recognize that allowing politically-motivated book removals would fundamentally distort the nature and function of public libraries.”

In August, major publishers including Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster sued the state of Florida, alleging that its laws about books squelch students’ and parents’ First Amendment rights. At issue is HB 1069, part of which requires districts to remove any books that “depict or describe sexual content” or are “pornographic.” That section has led to removals of books like Toni Morrison’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. Best-selling authors for young people joined the suit as plaintiffs, including Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give, and Jodi Picoult, who has had multiple titles pulled off shelves in the Sunshine State.

It’s not just Florida where teachers and librarians are wrestling with the ripple effects of legislation limiting student access. In Texas, school officials have ordered freezes on new book purchases or pulled all classroom books for review to ensure compliance. (One Texas pre-K teacher received a reprimand after she bought a new board book for class with her own money.) The Idaho legislature passed a measure that allows anyone affiliated with a student at a public or private school to sue its library over any book that contains “obscene materials,” which lawmakers defined as any depiction of homosexuality or nudity. Utah lawmakers approved a proposal that bans a book statewide if three school districts ban the title.

These increasingly harsh state statutes are fueling concern about federal bans if conservatives are able to enshrine their proposed Project 2025 into law. PEN America and the Authors Against Book Bans advocacy group have both warned about the potential intellectual freedom impacts of the blueprint for a conservative-helmed government.

“Project 2025 is the single most expansive, extreme attack on our freedom to read that we’ve seen with ambition for federal government implementation,” Authors Against Book Bans co-founder Maggie Tokuda-Hall told LitHub. “It follows much of the playbook already established by the right-wing extremists who seek book bans.”

Launched in January, Authors Against Book Bans has organized speakers at multiple school board and city council meetings, highlighted opportunities to advocate with various state lawmakers, hosted read-ins at the Idaho state capitol and rated political candidates on their support for intellectual freedoms.

More new efforts to combat bans include We Are Stronger Than Censorship, a partnership of EveryLibrary Institute and the Independent Book Publishers Association. The group launched a fundraising drive aimed at distributing at least 2,000 banned books to impacted areas through partners like the Texas Freedom to Read Project and the Florida Freedom to Read Project. The American Library Association has designated Sept. 28 as Let Freedom Read Day under the Banned Books Week umbrella, with a particular focus on election organizing. And looking ahead, Unite Against Book Bans has designated Oct. 19 as a Freedom to Read Day of Action for libraries, bookstores and community groups.