A new report has found that the number of banned non-fiction books doubled during the 2024-2025 school year in the US.
PEN America analysed the 3,743 unique titles removed from school libraries and classrooms in the July to June period and found that over 1,100 or 29% were non-fiction, more than double the year prior.
The most common theme in the banned non-fiction books was activism and social movements. “These titles help students learn about their rights and the stories of those who confronted injustice and participated in social movements to change the world around them,” said McKenna Samson, a co-author of the report.
Banned non-fiction titles included Challenges for LGBTQ+ Teens by Martha Lundin, Aztec, Inca, and Maya by Elizabeth Baquedano and Night by Elie Wiesel, a Nazi death camp memoir.
“This latest trend shows an embrace of anti-intellectualism, undermining public knowledge by devaluing education and expertise,” said Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America’s freedom to read program. “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.”
The year also saw double the percentage of books about sex education being banned, including titles such as You Know, Sex: Bodies, Gender, Puberty and Other Things by Cory Silverberg.
Findings also showed high figures for marginalised communities with LGBTQ+ characters (39%) and people of colour (44%) continuing to be over-represented in the books being targeted.
Books about death and grief made up 48% of titles while those about empowerment and self-esteem made up 39%.
Fiction titles at risk in the past year included dystopian dramas such as Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and other books including To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Push by Sapphire.
Since PEN America started documenting book bans in 2021, there have been more than 23,000 instances on record.
A report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress last year showed that a third of 12th-graders who had been federally tested did not have basic reading skills. Scores were the worst they had been for three decades.
The report arrives after findings from the American Library Association which shows that books banned in all US libraries saw a record high in 2025. Similarly, 40% of the titles challenged involved representations of LGBTQ+ people or people of colour.
