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The American Library Association (ALA) has released its annual report into banned books, and LGBTQ+-themed titles topped the list again.

Seven of 10 books banned last year had LGBTQ+ characters, while the top two – All Boys Aren’t Blue, by George M Johnson and Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer – are memoirs by LGBTQ+ authors which have previously been banned or had their sale restricted in the US. Both have featured on the list since 2021, with Gender Queer hitting the number-one spot three times since it was published in 2019.

The full list remains largely unchanged since last year, with queer semi-autobiographical graphic novel Flamer, by Mike Curato, The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which was turned into a film starring Logan Lerman, Ezra Miller and Emma Watson, and Tricks, by Ellen Hopkins, all included.

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The majority of banned books in US public schools last year dealt with people of color, LGBTQ+ people and other demographics, according to a new study from PEN America.

The report also counteracts claims by conservative lawmakers that books being removed from classrooms are sexually explicit and that book bans are altogether a “hoax”, an assertion made by Donald Trump. There were more than 10,000 instances of books being banned in the 2023-24 school year, PEN America reported, a sharp increase from the previous year, as Republican-led states implemented new censorship laws.

Out of 4,218 book titles that were banned, 1,534 – or 36% – featured people of color, the most censored identity group in book bans. Some removed titles included August Wilson’s Pulitzer-prize winning play Fences and Innosanto Nagara’s A is for Activist, a picture book for children about social issues.

Titles featuring LGBTQ+ characters also made up a sizable number of book bans: 1,066 books, or 25% of all banned titles, included LGBTQ+ people. Transgender or genderqueer characters were specifically targeted in such book bans, as 28% of removed books featuring LGBTQ+ characters included that demographic.

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Over 10,000 books have been banned across the entire United States over the past school year. The trend has seen a particularly strong increase in states with a strong Republican presence, according to free-speech nonprofit PEN America.

This is a major increase compared to the 2022-2023 year, which saw a total of 3,362 books banned across the country. Florida and Iowa are leading in the total number of bans, with over 8,000 recorded between the two states. This number is largely due to the increasingly strict laws on book bans.

The banned books include Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie; the famous work on anti-Black racism Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 by W.E.B. DuBois; Alex Haley’s book about the lived experience of slaves, Roots: The Saga of an American Family; and James Baldwin’s autobiography Go Tell It On the Mountain. Read on…

The American Library Association (ALA) is out with their latest list of the most banned and challenged books, a dubious honor accorded books in library collections in the United States enduring the highest number of attempted bans and demands for censorship.

The list is aggregated by the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom from reports filed by library professionals and community members, as well as from news stories published throughout the U.S. Because many book challenges go unreported, the ALA Banned and Challenged Book List is only a snapshot. The organization says a challenge to a book may be resolved in favor of retaining the book in a collection, or it can result in a book being restricted or withdrawn from a library.

The most recent list covers bans and challenges in 2022. ALA documented 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources last year, the highest number of attempted book bans since the group began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than 20 years ago. The unparalleled number of reported book challenges in 2022 nearly doubles the 729 challenges reported in 2021.

A record 2,571 unique titles were targeted for censorship. Seven of the top 13 most challenged books contained LGBTQ+ themes and/or characters, including the most challenged title, author Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer. The graphic novel/memoir faced 151 formal calls for censorship in libraries across the country. Juno Dawson’s This Book is Gay rounds out the list with 48 formal challenges.

Read on…