Book bans are on the rise – and they’re increasingly focused on censoring facts.
In a new report on banned books in U.S. public schools, the free expression advocacy group PEN America found that the number of non-fiction books pulled from shelves doubled last year. The group describes a “surge” of book bannings targeting non-fiction science, history, and biographic titles, including books about the digestive system and ancient Egypt.
PEN America conducted an analysis of 3,743 books removed from American school libraries and classrooms in the 2024-2025 academic year. Of the banned titles, 29% or 1,100 were non-fiction, up from 14% in the previous school year.
Fiction titles still make up the lion’s share of banned books, but the spike in non-fiction books targeted for their content is particularly alarming and hints at a new frontier in American academic censorship. Compared to the prior school year, the portion of educational and informational books banned grew from 5% of all banned titles to 13%.
“This latest trend shows an embrace of anti-intellectualism, undermining public knowledge by devaluing education and expertise,” PEN America Program Director Kasey Meehan said in a statement on the findings. “It is another example of how censorship sweeps broadly, leading to removals of all kinds of books, in its efforts to sow fear and distrust in our public education system.”
Books aren’t banned in a vacuum. Titles can be flagged and pulled in a few different ways, including through parent or community interventions, by administrative decision, or in response to government policies. When a single book is banned, hundreds of copies of that title might be pulled from circulation in a school district across libraries and classrooms.
Anatomy of a banned book
In its report, Pen America identified a number of trends in the titles being pulled from school shelves. Of the 3,743 unique titles banned during the last school year, 57% of those books contained violence, 48% addressed death and grief, 39% dealt with empowerment and self-esteem, and 36% featured LGBTQ topics.
Of the nearly 4,000 titles banned between 2024 and 2025, 38% were in the realistic/contemporary genre, 25% were dystopian, sci-fi, or fantasy, 14% were history or biographic books, and 13% were educational and informational. PEN America describes the latter category as predominantly non-fiction written “for reference or learning purposes” across a wide breadth of topics including art, language, politics, geography, identity, puberty, mental health, and self-help.
Objections to exposing children to sexual content are a common complaint when people seek to ban a book, but PEN America’s report found that only 10% of titles banned in the last school year actually featured “on the page” consensual sexual content. Sex dominates the conversation around censoring the kinds of books K-12 students have access to, but the reality is that most banned books don’t actually contain descriptions of sexual content.
In the latest crop of banned books, 44% featured characters or people of color – the largest percentage to date. In the prior school year, 36% of the targeted titles featured racial minorities. The increase, along with a similar uptick in banned books featuring LGBTQ characters and content, reflects a broader political climate that normalizes attacks on marginalized communities beyond the library.
In a report published last month, the American Library Association found that more than 90% of efforts to ban or restrict books originated with organized pressure groups, school administrators, and government officials. Less than 3% of challenges to books came from parents of schoolchildren and even fewer originated from the students who actually use school libraries.
