In the 2023-24 school year, over 10,000 instances of book bans in schools were recorded by PEN America. This year, the American Library Association announced the theme and date for the 2025 Banned Books Week: October 5 – 11. The theme, “Censorship Is So 1984. Read for Your Rights,” is a direct reference to the novel by George Orwell, 1984, in which a totalitarian government rules over every aspect of their people’s lives, down to their very thoughts.
Banned Books Week, which began in 1982, celebrates the freedom to read and fights against organizations attempting to ban books in schools. According to PEN America, Texas was ranked third in the 2023-24 school year for most school book bans, their definition of a ban being, “any action taken against a book based on its content … that leads to a previously accessible book being either completely removed from availability to students, or where access to a book is restricted or diminished, either temporarily or permanently.”
Banned Books Week tackles more than just book bans in government institutions. It also fights against across-the-board censorship of books in the United States as whole.
Among their statistics, PEN America also highlights the subject matter of the books in question, revealing that this year 57% of the 1,091 books banned in two or more districts contained some form of sexual content which for many Americans is a highly controversial topic in terms of how it is broached with the youth. This calls into question how much of the responsibility regarding explicit content lies with parents and how much lies with the public entities
Out of the aforementioned 1,091 books, 60% were intended for young adult audiences, who are considered to be ages 18-26, according to official publications under the National Institutes of Health. This raises another question: should these books be placed in the hands of minors in the first place? If they are restricted, does this damage students’ learning by limiting their exposure to many real life struggles?
