1. United States
2. N.J.
3. Letter

What books are banned in 2026? Across the United States, thousands of books have been removed from public school classrooms and libraries as part of an unprecedented wave of censorship. Since 2021, PEN America has documented nearly 23,000 book bans in public schools, a number never before seen in the life of any living American. These book bans now affect nearly every state and disproportionately target books about race and racism, titles by or about people of color, and books featuring LGBTQ+ characters and themes, as well as works for older readers that include sexual references or discussions of sexual violence. The most frequently banned books in the four school years from fall of 2021 to spring 2025 include beloved books by authors including Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, and Judy Blume. John Green’s popular young adult novel Looking for Alaska was most frequently banned, followed by Jodi Picoult’s book centered around a school shooting, Nineteen Minutes. In the 2024-2025 school year, PEN America recorded 6,870 instances of book bans affecting nearly 4,000 unique titles. The 15 most banned books in the 2024-2025 school year, according to the PEN America Index of School Book Bans, include the Anthony Burgess classic A Clockwork Orange, two books in the Sarah J. Maas Court of Thorns and Roses series, and Nineteen Minutes. For more on what kinds of bans are happening and where, read Banned in the U.S.A.: The Normalization of Book Banning. Or find a full list of the 52 most banned books since 2021.